Mail instantly crashes

Question

I try to launch mail, and all that is in there is some orphaned email headers from an old account. I can't delete them for some reason, and my mail crashes almost instantly. In the old days, I'd just drag a mail file to the trash and it would build me a clean empty mailbox when I relaunched it, but I can't seem to find a file or cache to trash in the new 10.5 OS. All I want to do is start off with a nice clean empty copy of mail and then set up my new account. Do I need to reinstall mail? Is there something I can trash so it will rebuild?
Thanks, Dave

Answer 1

In doing some more digging, I answered my own question. Apparently this has been an issue with many others, and it was solved (at least in my case) in a previous thread by jchase:
jchase
Posts: 12
Registered: Jun 30, 2007
Re: Mail crashing
Posted: Oct 26, 2007 7:11 PM in response to: jbjonez
Just got off the phone with apple after speaking with someone for over two hours!
This is what worked for me:
Create two folders on the desktop.
In the first one, move user/library/preferences (the contents, not the actual folder)
In the second, move user/library/mail (again, just the contents)
Restart computer.
Open mail.
Create accounts again.
It has been working since.
Now the issue was that we weren't sure which pref was corrupt, but I went ahead and dragged them all back into the preferences folder, and so far it's still working.
Anyway, mail hasn't crashed again yet, hopefully this solved it.