Mail.app grabs more and more virtual memory... then quits

Question

Hello all,
I'm running OS X 10.4.8, and Mail.app 2.1 and I recently had trouble with my internet connection (Verizon's fault). Now that I'm back up and running, Mail.app takes over my computer.
After I launch Mail, it seems to read my mail off the server okay, and shows it in the right window, but I get that spinning grey circle next to the icon for "inbox" (I normally see this whenever I'm checking mail), but the circle never stops spinning.
After noticing that my computer becomes slow as molasses, I was able to watch what was happening via the Activity Monitor utility. Mail.app starts out with about 100 Mb of Virtual Memory, but this number goes up, and keeps on going up. By the time it gets to 2 Gb Mail eventually quits "unexpectedly." But the whole time I've lost the ability to use the computer (even the mouse pointer hangs, I can't even point to the Dock, etc).
This behavior happens even when I unplug the computer from the internet (ethernet).
I've tried repairing permissions, but that had no effect. So now I'm left to only check mail using the mac.com website.
Thanks in advance.
iMac 800 Mhz G4   Mac OS X (10.4.8)   512 Mb RAM

Answer 1

Hello Chett.
Verify/repair the startup disk (not just permissions), as described here:
The Repair functions of Disk Utility: what's it all about?
Also, go to Apple Menu > System Preferences > Network > Show: Network Port Configurations, and make sure that the configuration used to connect to Internet appears at the top of the list.
How many accounts do you have and what type are they (POP, IMAP, .Mac)?
Do you have any Mail plug-ins installed? In the Finder, go to each of the following folders (if they exist). What do you see there?
/Library/InputManagers/
~/Library/InputManagers/
/Library/Mail/Bundles/
~/Library/Mail/Bundles/
Note: For those not familiarized with the ~/ notation, it refers to the user’s home folder. You can easily locate any of the folders referred to in this post by copying the folder path here, doing Go > Go to Folder in the Finder, and pasting the folder path there.