Mail won't start up after 10.11.1 and freezes my iMac

Yes, I have a similar problem. I upgraded earlier this morning and when the system restarted it froze at about 70% on the progress bar. I had no cursor on screen. After 2 hours of doing nothing I powered it down and booted into recovery mode and ran Disk Utility to check my HD which checked out OK but when I restarted I didn't get any further.

I then contacted Apple Support and spent about 30 minutes with them trying to resolve this issue. The first attempt was to boot into safety mode, which took ages but did get me as far as my account login screen. Once I logged in the Mac froze again so I was advised to do a system restore from Time Machine. I chose not to do this as I created a bootable USB memory stick with El Capitan 10.11.0 on it, so used that for my system recovery as it's far quicker (30 minutes). that Time Machine. None of my own data or apps were overwritten though so this wasn't a clean install but at least I did get control back. When I eventually got control on the Desktop, Mail and Safari were both in memory and Mail had hung showing a blank screen. I must have initiated the update earlier this morning when they were both running without realising this so that's an elementary blunder which I shouldn't have done, as I know better. Anyway, these apps didn't quit and this is a possible explanation for the carry-on that followed on.

I did successfully update an older MacBook Pro last night to 10.11.1 but noticed that when I launched Mail this morning it was initially slow then reported it was updating my mail accounts (and files?). I eventually did get control but it took a worrying length of time to complete the Mail update so I think that having Mail running when the system was upgrading was responsible for what followed on .

I also had issues with 10.11.0 crashing my iMac from a cold start when I upgraded from 10.10.5. It filled the startup screen with loads of garbage when the machine was powered up and froze immediately after so doing so I had go through system recovery on it as well. All in all, my experience with El Capitan upgrades has been awful. I've owned Macs for 10 years now and performed OS upgrades from 10.5 onwards without any issue whatsoever but upgrading to 10.11 has been extremely problematic.

Exact same thing happened to me, mail crashes every time I open it. I noticed that when I logon as the guest user, mail opens. Must be something it has messed up with the current user with accounts. This only happened after updating to 10.11.1

If you have Time Machine, go back to Yosemite. Tried all the suggested tips so far. Safe Mode, ran Disk Utility, Time Machined back to original El Capitan. Running Time Machine to reset back to Yosemite. Suggest you do the same. Hopefully this works, won't know till I get home had to leave for work.

It appears something went wrong with the indexing when the upgrade happened.

I ended up doing this and it worked:

1. Quit Mail (make sure there's no dot under the icon in the dock)
2. Using the Go Menu, I entered: /Users/[yourusername]/Library/Mail/V3/MailData
3. Locate all the "Envelope Index" files (I had 3) and trash them
4. Start Mail Application
5. Wait

You should be able to see your mail. After it's done, it will take some time to completely reindex everything.

There is a big change in the way Mail is stored in El Capitan. Previously all your Mail data was in the V2 folder.

Your User's Library > Mail > V2

In El Capitan the data is imported into V3 folder. For some this process has failed and/or took so long you thought Mail was not working and you quit the process before it was finished.

Options to fix depend on what type of account(s) (POP, IMAP, Exchange) and if you stored any messages under the local "On My Mac" folders.

Time Machined back to Yosemite and turned off all automatic updates in App Store. El Capitan has been a nightmare!

Further to my posting of yesterday, I restored my system to 10.11.0 using my bootable USB memory stick. I then found this thread on Discussions: Boot up after installing El Capitan

I decided to follow the advice about kext files and spent some time time earlier today doing some detective work. I started by installing EtreCheck and getting a report on my 10.11.0 system. **Be warned that you use EtreCheck at your own risk. I cannot be held responsible for anything that occurs if you act on the report it generates. **

The EtreCheck report showed a number of kext files hadn't loaded in 10.11.0, including a Vbox kext, a known culprit for crashing El Capitan. I'd already deleted one Vbox kext file from my ~/Library/Extensions folder three weeks ago to get 10.11.0 running but this one was in the /Library/Extensions folder. I deleted it. As a precautionary measure, I then created a folder called "Unsupported" and moved the other 4-5 "not loaded" kext files to it. I downloaded the 10.11.1 update file from Apple, rather than using App Store because I anticipated having to do several recoveries/updates before I got anywhere and couldn't be bothered waiting for App Store to do it every time.

I restarted my iMac, installed the update and that forced another restart. The first thing different I saw was the progress bar on the Apple Logo page now had a timer below showing 20 minutes. No timer appeared yesterday when I did the update. After what seemed like ages, that decremented to 19 minutes and so on. Finally, and much to my delight, my Desktop eventually did appear and a check shows that my Mac is now running 10.11.1.

It's an awful lot of trouble to go to and I wouldn't advise anyone to meddle with Library files unless you know what you are doing. Mac owners certainly shouldn't have to do this type of trouble shooting. Apple have made a serious blunder with El Capitan and I sincerely hope they are working on a fix because lots of users are affected.

Hi Fred, I think your response is great for people who want to return to Yosemite, but I'm not sure how it's relevant to the Mail issue.

I've had no other problems with El Capitan, other than this Mail issue, which I posted a method to resolve that worked well for me. Not that you haven't had issues with El Capitan, but I don't know that reverting is the best option for most people.

Best of luck!

Point taken, Paul.

I did a search for anyone having 10.11.1 freeze issues and this was one of the top hits. I have an appointment next week with the optician! 😉

Fred Grieve wrote:

I started by installing EtreCheck and getting a report on my 10.11.0 system. **Be warned that you use EtreCheck at your own risk. I cannot be held responsible for anything that occurs if you act on the report it generates. **

Hello Fred,

That's my line. 🙂

The EtreCheck report showed a number of kext files hadn't loaded in 10.11.0, including a Vbox kext, a known culprit for crashing El Capitan. I'd already deleted one Vbox kext file from my ~/Library/Extensions folder three weeks ago to get 10.11.0 running but this one was in the /Library/Extensions folder. I deleted it. As a precautionary measure, I then created a folder called "Unsupported" and moved the other 4-5 "not loaded" kext files to it. I downloaded the 10.11.1 update file from Apple, rather than using App Store because I anticipated having to do several recoveries/updates before I got anywhere and couldn't be bothered waiting for App Store to do it every time.

If you want to uninstall any software for diagnosing a problem, you should always use a vendor-provided uninstaller or uninstallation instructions. Anything that installs using an installer, and especially with an admin password, should only be removed using an uninstaller. Just because EtreCheck reports an extension as "not loaded", doesn't mean there is anything wrong with it. Extensions are loaded and unloaded on demand from some other piece of software or hardware. If you remove the extension that it needs, there is no guarantee what might happen. That can include hardware damage and loss of data.

Oops! Didn't mean to tread on your toes.

Of the suspect 4/5 kext files I homed in on, all came from 3rd party vendors. The Xbox kext file has been widely reported on many Mac forums as being a probable source of the 1011.0 installation freeze issue. Of the others, they were all quite old files and some referred to legacy software no longer on my Mac. The only one I had some doubts with was an agilebits kext file so I checked with them and it originates from a previous version of 1Password so was quite safe to move.

However, I do take your point about not being loaded as not a valid reason to (re)move any system file. I am working with two safety nets as I have an Apple Time Capsule connected to this LAN and I also have an external HD connected to my iMac. I use Carbon Copy Cloner to create an incremental bootable backup of my MacintoshHD drive on the USB HD. No, I'm not paranoid (well, maybe slightly) but I have witnessed so many HD failures over the years on other people's systems that I prefer the "belt and suspenders" approach on my own.

Fred Grieve wrote:

Oops! Didn't mean to tread on your toes.

No worries. It is just an inside joke. I added a very similar disclaimer to the most recent version of EtreCheck about 3 days ago.

It is just a challenge to have EtreCheck express what is really going on inside the machine without inspiring people to try to do something about it. The only real reason I use red is because blue already means "hyperlink".

Two years ago I was one of those who was very keen to tell people to dig into kernel extensions, launch daemons, etc. to remove incompatible software. But two years is a long time in this world. I don't see that kind of digging around in hidden directories as having much value anymore.

I'm having frequent mail hanging issues. Oddly, no such problem appeared in the betas I was using. This is very frustrating. *** was I beta testing, a bunch of stupid emoji?

Totally fixed it. Thanks!!!!