fixing a corrupt mail file

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Level 1

14 points

fixing a corrupt mail file

When Mail opens, it spins a bit and then it dumps. The dump states:

Application Specific Information:! *** Terminating app due to exception while holding database lock 'NSInvalidArgumentException', reason: '-[MCAttachment attachmentsByURL]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x6000003e8600'! abort() called!

This is OX X 10.9.1

Any ideas on how to fix this?

I have tried to use TimeMachine to restore and I continue to get the same error even for files when MAIL worked.

iMac (24-inch Mid 2007), OS X Mavericks (10.9.1)

Posted on Feb 1, 2014 1:39 PM

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Answer 1

Ewood113 Author

Level 1

14 points

Feb 24, 2014 11:35 AM in response to Ewood113

Issue was resolved but not easily. It was not a bad hard drive, it was not bad software.

Steps taken to resolve:

1. re-installed OS X Mavericks, restored from TimeMachine did not fix problem.

2. Securely erased hard drive, reinstalled Mavericks, restored from TimeMachine did not fix problem.

3. Replaced hard drive, reinstalled OS X Mountain Lion, Mail worked at this point but I didn't have any of my files. Restored from TimeMachine the full drive. Problem still existed.

4. Called Apple support, created a test user account with same mail account. New mail loaded fine and worked. Went to main user account and deleted Mail index files to no avail. Finally created a new iCloud mail account and restarted MAIL which resolved the problem.

The lesson learned from all this was that it was a data problem. Some corrupt email message(s) were causing the problem. The end result for me was a new larger hard drive and I cleaned out 5 years of emails. Was never able to restore any portion of my old mail database.

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