Mail no longer functions properly since the recent update to 10.4.9

Question

Mail will launch but I get the spinning beach ball of death while waiting for Mail to fetch mail......and it spins & spins & spins.......etc. To the point where I have to force Mail to quit.
I then have to go to my ISP domain to fetch my own mail.
Is anyone else having this problem and, if so, what can be done to fix it??
2007-03-15 / 11:35:17: Installed "Mac OS X Update (PowerPC)" (10.4.9)
PS - I did 'repair permissions' prior to the update and after the update was installed too.

Answer 1

The thread you found doesn’t really discuss the same problem, as in that case Mail was crashing (i.e. quitting unexpectedly), rather than becoming unresponsive. What I usually suggest to start troubleshooting cases like yours is the following -- the network settings in particular is something you may not have looked at, and note that I recommend to verify/repair the disk itself (i.e. the filesystem) rather than permissions.
Verify/repair the startup disk (not just permissions), as described here:
The Repair functions of Disk Utility: what's it all about?
Go to Apple Menu > System Preferences > Network, choose Network Port Configurations from the Show popup menu, and make sure that the configuration used to connect to Internet appears at the top of the list.
Finally, try launching Mail under the following conditions (you may need to force quit it first if it’s running) and post back with your observations:
1. Holding the Shift key down until the main window appears. This tells Mail to not select any mailboxes or load any messages upon start up.
2. With no Internet connection.