apple mail memory leak

Question

Level 1

0 points

apple mail memory leak

Hi,

I recently experienced an issue with my apply mail, version 4.6. I have an iMac operating software 10.6.8. I noticed my computer behaving sluggish about a week ago, especially running apple mail. I have a lot of messages that I could delete. I began deleting messages in my junk box and the ones sitting in trash and then the spinning ball of terror kept spinning for several minutes and apple mail froze. I have to force shutdown my computer and restarted it after a few minutes. As long as I didn't open up apple mail, my computer was fine. Once I opened apple mail, I noticed my hard drive gigs were declining. I'm talking about going from 30GB to 7GB trying to check email with apple mail. I'm a photographer, so I have a lot of client's photos (and my own photos) on my hard drive. I ran Norton Antivirus a week ago when I noticed this strange occurrence with apple mail. Norton antivirus found 3 trojan viruses with my husband's email account with apple mail. Norton repaired the files. I found the emails, that were sitting in the junk mail folders, and deleted them. I also deleted the messages through my Library. I ran Norton antivirus again and the scan came out clean. I ran disk utility, verify disk and verify disk permissions came out good. I gave up for about a week because my family and I went out of town for Thanksgiving holiday. Now that I'm back home, I am trying still to figure out why I am having this memory leak with apple mail. I've launched Activity Monitor and apple mail virtual memory climbs as it tries to check mail, I'm talking about 200GB and climbing before I have to force quit out of apple mail. As long as I don't check email using apple mail, my computer works fine. I've tried removing the cache and mail.plist and revamp my email user account, but it did the same thing. I tried checking things out using Terminal, from this website that I found, thinking at first it was a virus… http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-57410096-263/how-to-remove-the-flashback-ma lware-from-os-x/, but my computer came out clean. I even tried removing messages from the RSS feed. I was attempting to remove the RSS mailbox from apple mail, but it begins to eat at my hard drive memory then apple mail become unresponsive. Has anyone else had this problem? What other suggestions do you have that I can try? I found this website as well, but I can't even get into apple mail long enough to rebuild mailboxes…http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-20003752-263.html. Thank you in advance for your help.

The only things I have plugged into my computer is ethernet (Comcast/Xfinity cable modem and Cisco router) and Canon MX680 printer.

iMac, iOS 6, Version 10.6.8

Posted on Dec 2, 2013 9:04 PM

Reply

Answer 1

thomas_r.

Level 7

31,989 points

Dec 3, 2013 3:13 AM in response to ADomi1798

This is definitely not malware of any kind. Especially Flashback, which is extinct at this point and never interfered with Mail in the first place. It targeted the web browser.

Sounds like something in your Mail data is corrupt. My guess would be that Norton caused it. Not only is Norton not much good at detecting Mac malware, it's also renowned for bringing healthy Macs to their knees. Plus, you should never allow any anti-virus software to delete anything from your Mail data, as that can corrupt mailboxes.

First, uninstall Norton. This requires running the original installer, which will offer to uninstall it when it detects that Norton is already installed. If you no longer have the original installer, you will need to re-download it.

If removing Norton doesn't help (probably won't, but you never know, and it needs to go anyway), I would open Mail and rebuild every mailbox (select them, one at a time, and choose Mailbox -> Rebuild for each one). Edit: sorry, missed the fact that you can't manage to do this.

If that doesn't help, you may need to just reset Mail and start over. This will involve moving your Mail preferences and Mail folder to the desktop, opening Mail, setting up your account(s) again and then importing any messages that you need to from the mailboxes in the Mail folder. That's a pain in the butt, but it is sometimes the quickest way to resolve issues like this. Let us know if you need help with that.

Reply

Answer 2

MadMacs0

Level 5

5,221 points

Dec 3, 2013 12:43 PM in response to ADomi1798

Are any of your e-mail accounts Gmail?

Reply

Answer 3

ADomi1798 Author

Level 1

0 points

Dec 3, 2013 2:43 PM in response to thomas_r.

Thank you for your help thomas_r. I tried to reset Mail last night, but had the same results with the memory leak. I will try to rebuild the mailboxes. As long as I take all the accounts offline, I'm able to have apple mail open. I began last night deleting old messages, hoping that might help. But once I took my accounts online, the mystery memory leak set in again.

And MadMacs0, my email is linked with my father's own business email accounts provided by AT&T. I've read a few forums that this happens often with google email addresses in Apple mail. Could this a similar problem?

Thank you again for the help.

Message was edited by: ADomi1798

Reply

Answer 4

MadMacs0

Level 5

5,221 points

Dec 3, 2013 3:27 PM in response to ADomi1798

ADomi1798 wrote:

I tried to reset Mail last night, but had the same results with the memory leak.

Just so we're all on the same frequency here, what you are describing is not technically a "memory leak". That happens in RAM when an application continues to require more and more RAM the longer it runs. What you are describing is data filling up your hard drive (most probably a lot of e-mail). But it might be useful to be certain that is what's filling it up by running something like GrandPerspective (donationware) to see where what's using the most HDD space.

my email is linked with my father's own business email accounts provided by AT&T. I've read a few forums that this happens often with google email addresses in Apple mail. Could this a similar problem?

I'd have to say no at this point. Gmail is quite unique in their approach to IMAP and Apple is struggling to adapt Apple Mail to this uniqueness. Most user problems involve older e-mail messages that seem impossible to completely purge from all mailboxes.

Last I knew AT&T was using Yahoo Mail which is more traditional. I'm not clear on what you mean by "linked". Is this just an individual user account that comes with a business class AT&T ISP package?

Reply