Mail under Mountain Lion is painfully slow / unusable

KathiMR wrote:

Are you saying MacKeeper might be the problem?

BINGO!!! The singular most destructive program you can install on your Mac. Uninstall it immediately using this method

http://applehelpwriter.com/2011/09/21/how-to-uninstall-mackeeper-malware/

You will notice a dramatic improvement. Do you have any Anti-virus programs installed as well?

Pete

My mail crawls on a brand new clean MBP. MacKeeper and/or virus protection may further degrade performance, but don't get your hopes up that this will fix the fundamental problems with mail.

Just remembered another recent change that Apple personnel did after I got my iPad mini.

I bought Pages & Keynote for it & they weren't able to use iCloud & they found for some reason that the versions I had weren't updating. So they reinstalled at least those from their little HD.

Oh, yeah, they also changed what was syncing via iCloud or how my calendars sync, changed from google to something else. Not sure what they did, but they said that was better.

No anti-virus programs as I was told they weren't needed.

I'm confused by your comment about MacKeeper since no one that I know of that knows there stuff has said what you are saying about it. The genius I guess did say it could slow things down but that was about all. & again, my brother told me that it told him when it found dups to delete the newer ones. I never really got around to using it & I got a recent message that it should be updated.

Mackeeper is awful. If you are not careful you can damage things and it doesn't do most of what it is supposed. I totally agree with Pete - get rid of it.

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3027

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3057579?start=0&tstart=0

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4226972?start=0&tstart=0

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4060390?start=0&tstart=0

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3946863?start=0&tstart=0

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4276731?start=0&tstart=0

and I have barely touched the surface, but the choice is yours. I would recommend steering as far away from it as possible.

Pete

In my case Mail going slow is not related to this MacKeeper issue. I use Gmail with IMAP and have around 12000 messages. But the Lion version of Mail worked just fine with almost the same amount of mails.

If it may be of help to anyone I tried some of the solutions listed here and I think it worked...

sqlite3 ~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/Envelope\ Index vacuum;

I found this to work for me:

http://www.fixkb.com/2013/03/apple-mail-application-very-slow-to-respond.html#co mment-23886

Mail was taking 20-30 seconds to display a message from my “unread” smart mailbox (which usually has about 20 messages in it). Now, no delay.

Also, when typing in a message, it would stop displaying what I was typing, and then "catch up" to my input.

Don't know if this is a long-term fix, but it's working for now.

Thank You George.

It worked for me.

Paul, alias Indy.

my issues seemed to be the same as many on this thread. i tried every fix listed here that pertained to my issues, to no avail.

my MAIN issue was that every time i tried to type a name into a Mail search, or a new email, i would get the spinning ball of death and Mail would quit.

i have no iCloud account, no Gmail, no iMessage account.

in OS X 10.8.4, i noticed that Contacts had imported the main mailbox from my original email account from Mail but there were no contacts in it. (this probably happened when migrating my user account from a TM backup.) It had been imported as if it were its own HD (ie: "On My Mac"). a search was done on this every time i selected it or opened Contacts. obviously, it was finding nothing. Mail, of course, was searching this as well and as there was no content, it decided it was a problem and quit Mail every time i tried to search a name that MAY HAVE BEEN in that account.

first, i exported all contacts as a Vcard in Contacts (click on 'All Contacts', select all in the list, go to 'File/export/Vcard'. save it to your desktop for easy access.

Quit Contacts.

i went to (user)/Library/Application Support and deleted the Address Book folder.

re-opened Contacts and imported the contacts Vcard. (File/Import/(Vcard file)

if you have Contacts group lists, make sure to export each one. do not rename them.

you can then drag each Vcard list onto its own group name in Contacts (once you create each group again)

I hear you. Try loading Mail then Pages it will freeze your system. Aple care will tell you what they always say REBOOT or my Favorite REINSTALL! Awesome isnt it? Just imagine we paid for this stuff.

Hey have you tried holding your tongue and hopping on one foot 10 times then turn around 14 times and then reinstall? Wait 20 seconds hold your breath for 30 seconds breath then reboot and pray? Works everytime for me. sarcasm aside the price the system the bragging and Apple Support you would thinnk you could get through a day with out this sort of BS but that ia the Apple way. It looks good therefore it is good and hey since they say it is the greatest it is. That is their attitude and that is the way it will be until some other competitor can truly chalenge them. But for now they are as they are because they can. But look at their stock as it drops because of lack of a stable board and no new prducts that they can really stand on since the iPad Retina. Continue to call get their attention and force them to do that which is right and that is stand by their "Greatest" statment.

But I do love reading all these steps you have to go through to get your "Worlds Greatest OS" to do as it should...

Still Love my MAC just waiting for the real thing...

So do you have a problem? Like to share? Or just here to rant? No problems with Mail here if that's your problem. So not a normal issue.

Cheers

Pete

Have you not read the thread? People are ranting because this is (according to Nathan at Apple tech support, who, for now, seems to have solved my issue) a known issue with the "upgrade" to ML. He has no clue why it hasn't been addressed by Apple. I spent almost three hours on the phone with him, and I couldn't begin to tell you everything we had to do to fix the problem. But again, a known, yet unfixed major issue for dozens and dozens of people here on these forums, and I suspect everywhere else as well.

So no, we're not just griping or ranting. We're trying to get Apple to fix a known issue that is rendering many peoples' Mail essentially unusable. Did you have something constructive to add to the conversation, or are you just here to belittle the rest of us??

I was responding to someone else, not you. If it was a Mountain Lion issue in general then why are only a small amount of users seeing it. No problems here with many different accounts across five Macs and the others I service have had no issues either, so I don't know how 'dozens and dozens' constitute a problem with the many many million users. Maybe ask Nathan?

Cheers

Pete