Mail stalls on startup.

Question

Ok, have been using mail 2.1 for quite awhile with no problems. Yesterday, it ran into a brick wall. I launch the app, it automatically starts to download my email from my pop account. The spinning circle (not SPOD - the normal progress circle) appears in the mailbox pane, I get ONE message "[email protected]" appears with a 'Message status-Undeliverable" subject, and then the progrma stalls. I left it running for 5 hours, and it never got past this - it never stopped trying to recieve, it just sits there spinning.
I logged in to my mail account (doteasy) using webmail and there are 22 pages of new messages.
When I try and quit mail, the active window goes away, but the app icon doesn't. In other words, the application refuses to quit, however force quit does NOT show it in red/not responding. I can force quit, but that is the only way out.
I moved the .plist to the desktop, and the program gave me the initial screen fine, and was able to quit fine, but of course, I lost all my thousands of archived messages. Not an option. (moved the .plist back, problem returned)
I ran 'repair disk permissions', I ran the weekly/daily/monthly scripts. What other digital chicken bones should I shake rattle and roll to return this program to functionality??

Answer 1

Brian,
Properly done, removing the plist does NOT result in the loss of messages, but you would need to be careful.
With Mail not running, hold down the Shift key while clicking on the Mail icon to launch. Tell us the result of this, as this allows Mail to open without trying to open any particular message or mailbox.
Ernie