Mail is extremly slow with Imap-Access of GMX-Mailprovider

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Level 1

15 points

Mail is extremly slow with Imap-Access of GMX-Mailprovider

Hi!

I use a IMAP-Mailbox at GMX (one of the biggest german mail services) with Thunderbird under Windows and Mac Mail under - of course - Mac OS X. But the access with Mac Mail is extremly slow. Then I start the programm, it takes about a minute to show the new mails in my inbox. And then, if I click on a mail, the programm shows me "E-Mail laden" (german for "Loading Mail") and this always takes more than 30 seconds, even if the mail is really small and contains only some lines of text. Third problem: Sometimes I'm not able to close Mail then turning off the computer. Maybe, the cause is also the slow access to GMX. Does somebody now, how I can see the communication between GMX and Mail in a logfile? Maybe this would help.

Thanks,
Sebastian

Mac Mini Core Solo, Mac OS X (10.4.5)

Posted on Apr 28, 2006 11:30 PM

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Answer 1

Sijmons

Level 4

2,095 points

Apr 29, 2006 4:24 AM in response to sbrinkmann

This is not the normal behaviour, it should work wihtin seconds even on a slow connection. Your problem is something else, it could be damaged fonts, old cache files that are interfering etc,

Maybe something went wrong with your harddisk (permissions etc.) Do you ever run maintenance software (e.g. MacJanitor) or switch off your Mac every day? It's doing some maintenance by itself in the middle of the night if you leave it on.

This reply gets more & more detailed, just begin with the first instructions and see of that helps. If not, work down the list of suggestions.

Run Disk Utility - Repair Permissions and if that brings up a whole set of issues, try something more serious like Disk Warrior.

MacJanitor (free)
DiskWarrior (not free)

If you want more details on these problems, have a look here for Resolving Disk, Permission and Cache Corruption, it gives you a comprehensive description of how to deal with these problems. Plus some notes on side effects of cache cleaning

Useful Cache cleaning programs:
Cache Out X
Tiger Cache Cleaner not free
OnyX free

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Answer 2

May 10, 2006 1:08 AM in response to sbrinkmann

I have the same problemes here, also with GMX. Thunderbird works fine, but Tiger Mail (current version as of today) is very slow with loading emails. My impression is that this has something to do with the post box synchronization which is switched on by default. If I open the Activity window, I can see that Mail tries to download the messages from several folders in parallel, thereby opening quite a number of IMAP connections to the GMX IMAP server. These downloads are not all successful, they rather time out after a while. If I configure Tiger Mail not to keep local copies of the files, email seems to be as fast as with other programs. So I guess the cause of this problem is not permissions but too many IMAP connections to the server at the same time. I remember that I had similar problems earlier with Thunderbird under Windows when I configured Thunderbird to automatically classify messages using a Junk filter. This involves downloading all messages in the INBOX, of course, and I guess that Thunderbird opened a connection for each new message as well. This would be just another indication that the number of open IMAP connections is the issue here. I could not find an option in Tiger Mail to set a maximum number of allowed connections. Is there any way to test this hypothesis?

MacBook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.6)

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Answer 3

Jun 10, 2006 5:15 PM in response to hese4apple

This has been a problem since Tiger came out (maybe even with Panther, I don't remember), and I'm really disappointed that Apple didn't fix it.

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Answer 4

Jul 17, 2006 1:01 AM in response to sbrinkmann

The problem of slow IMAP was previously discussed here:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=713933#713933

It seems Mail.app included in 10.4.7 update provides a fix. I can confirm noticeable improvement with the CommuniGate Pro IMAP server.

I got this update on the issue by J o a r, who filed the bug report:

[quote]
A quick update:

I filed a bug report on this problem, and Apple got back to let me know that they thought that they had managed to fix the problem in the version of Apple Mail that ships with Mac OS X 10.4.7.
I think that I can confirm that the problem is indeed fixed, or at least much improved.

You might remember that the problem was that Apple Mail cached attachments from the server in small pieces - much too small, as it turned out, wich caused it to be very inefficient. The current implementation seems to progressively increase the size of the pieces requested from the server, making them twice the size each time the size is increased, and in this way making the transfer become much faster to begin with, and also faster over time.

Best regards,

j o a r
[/quote]

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Answer 5

Jul 17, 2006 1:43 AM in response to sbrinkmann

Hallo! I did not know GMX offers IMAP... I am using POP3 on GMX.

On the other hand, I have IMAP on AIM mail and I used to have problem with AIM, whenever I receive a "daily report" from a specific site with heavy graphic content, it always crash my Mail.app... So one day I tried doing a silly trick by creating a Mail rule:
If any of the following conditions are met:
Any recipient contains "xxxxxx@aim.xxx"
Perform the following actions:
Move Message to mailbox: GMX
from then onwards, I never have slow loading/crashing Mail.app problem...

But from time to time I still have time out problem with AIM... less frequently with GMX/GMail POP3 tho.

HTH.

WoofWoof

iBook G4 12 Mac OS X (10.4.7) 1GB RAM

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