Mail hang when getting email from multiple POP accounts

Question

I'm posting this issue again.
Mail hangs while getting new mail from multiple POP accounts almost every time. When it does, only Force Quit can quit it.
The following DID NOT fix the hang:
- Reconstructing all mail boxes
- Exporting, deleting and reimporting all mail boxes
- Disabling all rules
- Deleting anti-spam history
- Deleting all emails from all mail boxes
Testing each POP account individually while putty the other two offline works fine.
I also noticed that sometimes the new mail counter in Inbox displays 2-4 new messages while there is no new ones. Switching boxes/folders and back to Inbox fixes it.
The POP accounts are:
One plain text POP
One secure POP
One GMail POP
Can anyone help?

Answer 1

You’re welcome.
I did try to clear the junk mail preferences
The Junk Mail preferences cannot be “cleared”. What do you mean?
it crashes almost every single time.
It doesn’t crash (i.e. quit unexpectedly). It freezes (i.e. becomes unresponsive), right?
I transfered my data to a Mac Mini. I had the same exact problem on it too!
so it seems it has nothing to do with the OS plugins or the setup I have.
Well, that would depend on what exactly does “I transfered my data” mean...
Try first disabling all the rules in Preferences > Rules AND the junk filter in Preferences > Junk Mail. If the problem persists, proceed as follows.
Verify/repair the startup disk (not just permissions), as described here:
The Repair functions of Disk Utility: what's it all about?
After having fixed all the filesystem issues, if any, and ensuring that there’s enough space available on the startup disk (a few GB, plus the space needed to make a backup copy of the Mail folder), try this:
1. Quit Mail if it’s running.
2. In the Finder, go to ~/Library/Mail/. Make a backup copy of this folder, just in case something goes wrong, e.g. by dragging it to the Desktop while holding the Option (Alt) key down. This is where all your mail is locally stored.
3. Locate Envelope Index and move it to the Trash. If you see any other “Envelope Index”-named file there, delete it as well.
4. Move any “IMAP-”, “Mac-”, or “Exchange-” account folders to the Trash. Note that you can do this with IMAP-type accounts because they store mail on the server and Mail can easily re-create them. DON’T trash any “POP-” account folders, as that would cause all the mail stored there to be lost.
5. Open Mail. It will tell you that your mail needs to be “imported”. Click Continue and Mail will proceed to re-create Envelope Index — Mail says it’s “importing”, but it just re-creates the index if the mailboxes are already in Mail 2.x format.
6. As a side effect of having removed the IMAP account folders, those accounts may be in an “offline” state now. Do Mailbox > Go Online to bring them back online.
Note: For those not familiarized with the ~/ notation, it refers to the user’s home folder. That is, ~/Library is the Library folder within the user’s home folder, i.e. /Users/username/Library.