Hi, my friend received a 3mb mail attachment and when she opened the Mail app, it was asking her to set up her account. Of course, she doesn't want to lose her existing files so she hasn't done anything yet. Anyone have any ideas what the problem is and where she can find some help? I've done some googling and searching this forum but can't seem to find anything. She has Tiger on a G4PB 1.67Ghz. Thanks in advance for any assistance.
Essentially, there are two parts to mail: the folders that contains the actual emails, and the plist file which contains the settings. They're both located in the user library (not the main Library folder). It looks like it's the plist file that got messed up. I suggest she find them and back them up (copy) into another folder or drive. Just tell her to drag and drop these while holding down the Option key. Macintosh HD/Users/Library/Mail Macintosh HD/Users/Library/Mail Downloads Macintosh HD/Users/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist When that's done, she should do a permissions repair, or better yet, do an AppleJack Reboot. Try Mail again. If it asks her to setup once again, go ahead. She'll need to set up all her previous accounts so that she can see all her previous email from those accounts. The plist file contains everything that is setup in the Mail Preferences folder. IOW, if that plist file is lost or corrupted, she'll lose all those settings (accounts, smtp servers, rules, sigs, etc.), but not the email messages. Unless of course it's the Mail folder that got corrupted, which I doubt. Tiger treats each and very single message as an individual database file, as opposed to previous version where all mail were treated as one database. When everything is back to normal, i suggest a Rebuild of the database. This can easily be done by selecting a mailbox and using the command from the Mailbox menu. Good luck.
My friend brought her PB to my house and we fixed everything--Mail, iCal, Address book-- following Elbert's suggestions. Well, she was so relieved she had her driver buy me a caramel macchiato. The only strange thing is this: her Adobe Illustrator shuts down on her before opening but doesn't do that for any of the other users' accounts. (Her two daughters use her PB, too.) She has deleted the preference file, but it still shuts down. Any ideas?
now _you_ owe me a tall nonfat mocha as well. hahaha. just kidding. Glad to know it worked out. Let this be a wake up call, backups are important. I normally back up my entire user folder. Everything that's important and irreplaceable is in that folder. Everything else can be installed again. As for Adobe Illustrator, try a reinstall, That might just be the way to fix it.
Hehe @ elbert & boo I told her to back up regularly since anyway she has a big external drive. We tried reinstalling illustrator but it hasn't worked. Still the same problem.
Hi Jor, Try to remove the preferences settings for illustrator by going to ~/Library/Preferences/Adobe illustrator CS or CS2 Settings. You can move it temporarily to desktop, so that the next time illustrator will open it will create a fresh preferences files to that folder. ~ = user account short name and if by removing the preferences files still doesn't work, you can try to get another copy of illustrator installer if possible to rule out a bad copy.
Hi babynino - Thanks for the help. I'll try that. My friend will be bugging me tomorrow If it works, I get another macchiato hehehe
