Mail doesn't download Mail; shows "124 of 124 messages" in Activity.

Question

My girlfriend hasn't been able to get mail from one account for the last 30 hours, using her unibody MacBook (10.5.8) . Her 4 peers, using various Macs, are able to get their mail from the same server.
Mail logs into the server fine, but messages don't download and the Activity window immediately shows the number of messages as if it were downloading the last of her messages -- for example, it now shows "127 of 127 messages" -- and then goes blank as if it has completed downloading.
If there is any error message, it goes by too quickly to read.
How can we figure out what's going on? Is there a way to make the Activity messages persist? Is there some hidden switch that gets Mail to log its activity?

Answer 1

Hello there,
It seems we face the kind of same trouble. Now here is the way I solved it, but I am not sure it is academic although it worked. But before you choose to try this (when in deep shxxxxxt, it doesn't cost much to take some risks, does it), maybe try with the very last step which is to close or force close mail, get rid of the Mail app in the Dock (if you use this way of accessing Mail) and open Mail from the Applications folder on your hard disk. As mentioned, this is what I did at the end of the process I explain below and now Mail works like a charm again. So maybe this simple step would work too, but I don't know.
Now for what I really did: I accessed the Library (on my account, not on the hard disk – System 10.5.8). In this Library folder, there are 2 folders that you have to open. FIrst, the Preferences. In this folder, get rid of com.apple.mail.plist Then, in this same Library folder, there is one folder called Mail. I don't know what is in yours, but in mine I got rid of all documents dated with today's and yesterday's date or dates since when the trouble starded. Some of the documents are: AvailableFeeds, BackupTOC.plist, Envelope Index, DefaultCounts, MessageRules.plist, etc. (basically everything with a .plist and as mentioned everything dated very recent. They are sub-folders in that folders, such as POP-(account-name)@(provider).com, in which there are other subfolders named Messages. In this Messages folder, there are documents numbered with a .emlx extension. I got rid of all of those too.
When I deleted all these documents, I nervously restarted my computer then as mentioned above, I got rid of my Mail access from the Dock and opened Mail from the Applications folder on the hard disk. When you do so, there are some prompts, you click OK as if it was the first time you use Mail.
At the end of this process, Mail was opened and miraculously it worked like a charm.
As I said, I am not a guru, I don't know if this way is the way to go, but it worked for me.
Good luck