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Mail hangs following Lion Upgrade

I upgraded to Lion yesterday and mail was working just fine. I restarted my machine this morning and although the app opens its "not responding" and I get the spinning ball of death!. I cant use it at all. Anyone else had this problem and anyone managed to fix it?

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7), OSX Lion

Posted on Jul 22, 2011 12:05 AM

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30 replies

Jul 22, 2011 12:47 PM in response to gregfromglastonbury

I'm seeing Mail hang on my machine with the spinning ball of death. Unfortunately I don't have a solution, but it appears that specific emails cause Mail to hang. The email that hangs is a voicemail message from my VOIP provider that has a wav file embedded. This type of email never caused Mail to hang in Snow Leopard or in iOS.


Mail hangs on other emails as well, but not in a regular, reproducable fashion as in this one with the .wav file embedded.


I wonder if anyone else has seen other specific emails that cause this hang so that maybe we could possible characterize the issue better.

Aug 14, 2011 10:04 AM in response to gregfromglastonbury

Same (?) problem over here. After installing Lion, I noticed:

- immediatly after starting Mail, i get the 'spinning ball'

- the folder ˜user/library/mail now only contains two folders: 'Mail Lost+Found' and 'V2'

(in my TimeMachine copy there are lots of folders and files)

- can't change any pref because app hangs; settings are no longer accessable (ball is playing)

- only way to stop Mail is 'forced'

- have sent a number of 'auto-generated'reports to Apple; hope somebody takes notice

Aug 14, 2011 10:34 AM in response to gregfromglastonbury

I have a similar problem with Mail. However, I have found that this issue only occurs immediately after booting your Mac and opening Mail (It's only persistent with a cold boot up of Mail). For me, I have Mail to open at startup; this for some reason displays the problem addressed. I have found that to avoid the issue, let Mail fully startup and wait a couple minutes before interacting with Mail. The problem should go away and Mail will be functional again for that session. Once you reboot your Mac, do the steps again to bypass the problem. After doing this a few times, the problem should go away and the issue should be nonexistent.


I do believe this is an issue with Mail and hopefully be addressed by Apple. Hopefully this temporary workaround should work for everyone having this issue.

Aug 16, 2011 8:52 AM in response to gregfromglastonbury

I posted this elsewhere. Mail hangs for me on both my iMac and Macbook, but only when I try to open an email with an mp4 file attached. I have tried many fixes I have read here in Discussions and none worked. If I log into my gmail on the web, I can download the mp4 without a problem. It's a glitch. I also tried to send an email with a clip and the same thing happened. So then my email was kept in the "outbox" and if I even tried to trash it, mail hung to the spinning beach ball. And if I tried to re-send it, mail hung and had to force quit. I finally went into home/library and trashed the outbox file in the V2 box and that got rid of it. Waiting for some fix.

Aug 19, 2011 10:53 PM in response to gregfromglastonbury

I’m sure I don’t have the same problems many of you have here. I don’t have the BSOD, BUT my MacBook Pro, i7, 8gb RAM, 2010 crashed multiple times daily for 3 weeks IMMEDIATELY after installing 10.7. It had not crashed once in the previous 15 months. By “crashing” I mean all of my applications would gradually go to a “not responding” mode over about one minute. The only thing that would work would be my mouse / cursor. It would always necessitate a hard re-boot. I couldn’t really point to one thing or another causing the meltdown.


I’ve been watching seven different threads dealing with “similar” issues and have tried almost all of the “solutions”. Haha…read HUNDREDS of posts. This will probably be my only post, so I’ll lay out my observations.


  • My wife and I have identical machines…hers is totally cool. I have a bunch of utilities and 3 times as much software installed.
  • I don’t think everyone has the same problem even though it might look identical.
  • New logic board fixed / didn’t fix…oh no thought it worked…guess it didn’t…WHAT? These are COMPUTERS, not infallible machines. I just switched over from 30 years on DOS / Windows. Apple is still just a computer (still take it over Windows). My last Dell took over a year and 6 bios upgrades before it didn’t crash connecting an external hard drive. There are thousands of possible software combinations…and YES…defective hardware too. I’m 58 and have lost weeks…maybe months of my life to imperfect computers.
  • SO…I Repaired permissions, SMC reset, PRAM / NVRAreset, used gfxCardStatus, Fan Conrol, cleared cache, removed all security software, deleted “windowserver”…Nothing worked. (Was too scared to install the Nvidia driver talked about…plus didn’t seem to work except forseveral people.)
  • I finally did a Command + R > Disk Utility…and Verified the Disk. OH NO…my hard drive has errors! Did I install Lion on a disk with errors? No one said to “Verify” your disk before installing Lion. I read like 5 different articles!! So I “Repaired Disk” several times until it showed no errors. Nothing…still crashing.
  • I resort to calling Apple (got the 3 year plan.) The guy has me do all of the above. I spend 1 ½ hours with him…his longest call ever he tells me. He tells me to re-install Lion, BUT DO NOT RESTORE FROM TIME MACHINE. I hang up and reinstall Lion from the internet (Command + R). I didn’t know it would wipe my disk clean!! I said screw it and restored from Time Machine…hey…I wasn’t going to spend another whole day manually bringing stuff over unless absolutely necessary.
  • Is this what people have been referring to as a “Clean Install”? Did you check your disk for errors first?
  • It has been 2 minutes now and it seems to be working…Haha…make that 2 WEEKS now. I didn’t want to post until I was sure what worked for me. I have 10.7.1 installed for several days now too. NOT A SINGLE CRASH IN 2 WEEKS!


I will post this into all 7 threads I’ve been following and maybe this will help someone. I hope so. But if it doesn’t I won’t be too surprised because you may very well have a different issue than I had. Good luck! I love my MBP again…

Aug 22, 2011 9:36 AM in response to gregfromglastonbury

I have posted this elsewhere but the problem is consistent and persists. I have Lion installed on a black Macbook 2.16 and my Intel 3.03 iMac. Mail works fine except--if I either try to download or send an mp4 video clip, mail hangs immediately. I have tried every fix I have read here on the web and so far nothing has fixed it. Mail otherwise functions normally and I can of course access my gmail on the web and send and receive these family videos, but what's the point of having Apple mail if I can't use it.

Aug 22, 2011 10:59 AM in response to gregfromglastonbury

Mail has stopped working for me. It just has the spinning ball of death! I tried to go through Users and to the library folder but the library folder has disappeared so I can't fix the problem with my Mail app. I tried to send some pics and whenever I delete it from the outbox it just comes back to the spinning ball of death. Even when I force quit the pics are back in the outbox. Anyone got any suggestions on what to do?

Mail hangs following Lion Upgrade

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