Messages crashes repeatedly after upgrade to Mavericks

Question

After upgrading to Mavericks, Messages crashes repeatedly.
Macbook Pro 17", circa 2011 I think, OS X 10.9.2.
Immediately after upgrading to Mavericks it would just crash when I scrolled down through my conversation history, but if I just searched for conversations it was generally functional.
Following some Apple Support Communities advice I renamed several directories, hoping that if I clear out the message history and start from "scratch" I would have better luck. I mv'd all the directories in:
~/Library/Containers/com.apple.ichat/Data/Library/Messages
~/Library/Messages
After rebooting my laptop the conversation history cleared out like I had hoped, and as messages started coming in the chat.db, Archive, etc. folders were generated in the above directories like I expected. It was generally functional for a couple hours.
Now it crashes immediately on open. Here is first bit of the "Problem Details and System Configuration"
Process:         Messages [4886]
Path:            /Applications/Messages.app/Contents/MacOS/Messages
Identifier:      com.apple.iChat
Version:         8.0 (4226)
Build Info:      iChat-4226000000000000~3
Code Type:       X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process:  launchd [231]
Responsible:     Messages [4886]
User ID:         505
Date/Time:       2014-04-11 08:31:59.572 -0400
OS Version:      Mac OS X 10.9.2 (13C64)
Report Version:  11
Anonymous UUID: 
Crashed Thread:  0  Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread
Exception Type:  EXC_CRASH (SIGABRT)
Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000
Application Specific Information:
[4886] stack overflow
Thread 0 Crashed:: Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread
0   libsystem_kernel.dylib                  0x00007fff949cb866 __pthread_kill + 10
1   libsystem_pthread.dylib                 0x00007fff8a9f235c pthread_kill + 92
2   libsystem_c.dylib                       0x00007fff8ab5bbba __abort + 145
3   libsystem_c.dylib                       0x00007fff8ab5c46d __stack_chk_fail + 196
4   com.apple.ImageIO.framework             0x00007fff88232e10 initImageJPEG + 7028
5   ???                                     0xffff9fffffd43cdf 0 + 18446638520590417119
6   ???                                     0x0000058f00000311 0 + 6111738462993
Any ideas?
Thanks!

Answer 1

Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
Step 1
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar.
Enter the name of the crashed application or process in the Filter text field. Select the messages from the time of the last crash, if any. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.
When posting a log extract, be selective. In most cases, a few dozen lines are more than enough.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Important: Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.
Step 2
In the Console window, look under User Diagnostic Reports (not "Diagnostic and Usage Messages") for crash reports related to the crashed process. The report name starts with the name of the process, and ends with ".crash". Select the most recent report and post the entire contents—again, the text, not a screenshot. I know the report is long. Please post all of it anyway.
In the interest of privacy, I suggest that, before posting, you edit out the “Anonymous UUID,” a long string of letters, numbers, and dashes in the header of the report, if it’s present (it may not be.)
Please don’t post other kinds of diagnostic report—they're very long and rarely helpful.