Mail "Quit Unexpectedly"

[IWT]

@rethel

Jake mentioned this: just do us a small favour. You or your wife please Click on the Apple icon top menu bar , and from the dropdown choose "About this Mac".

It will show something like this:



This is the detail we need.

Ian

 

[rethel]

Aluminum Late 2008 - will send photo tonight

 

[IWT]

Aluminum Late 2008 - will send photo tonight

Thank you very much. Kind of you to do that.

Ian

 

[Randy B. Singer]

The Apple ID Device content was empty after I changed the password, and it had been populated when I checked again. It said MacBook, no machine ID, no year, no model, just MacBook.

System Preferences/System Report says Model 5,1 w/no year mentioned. El Capitan 10.11.6

Then it's likely a "Late 2008 13-inch MacBook" Model Number: A1278.

If you take your Mac to Apple to work on, they are unlikely to accept it. A 16 year old Mac is considered obsolete by Apple. Apple no longer even sells parts for obsolete models. See:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/102772

 

[rethel]

Hi Randy,

The machine is old, but still capable of doing what my wife uses it for. She felt her machine was slowing down after one of the upgrades so the disk was replaced by an SSD and the memory was doubled to 4 MB. Never a complaint since, but then again her only apps are Safari (wifi speed), Mail (finger speed) and Zoom.

A little history. Every time my wife came back from the Apple store with an upgraded system the table conversation would be dominated by what had changed, and she would be back at the Apple store every week for a while. This pattern was repeated on every upgrade until she was told 'no more'. This Mac is hers, it is familar, and much loved.

You have all been very patient and taught me more in the last few days than I have learned about Macs in the last 15 years.

In your first posting Randy you wrote "my recommendation is to do a complete reinstallation."

I will keep you all apprised of how things work out.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

Hi Randy,

The machine is old, but still capable of doing what my wife uses it for.

I completely understand. I still maintain a really old iMac in my office for running legacy software.

However, if your computer needs any more repairs that you have to pay for, it's likely not worth spending any money on. You can purchase a newer and far more capable used computer for only a few hundred dollars.

 

[IWT]

@rethel

I genuinely admire your persistence, patience and determination

Ian

 

[rethel]

My focus has been on fixing what was broken and that has been an education, but I overlooked the obvious.

The HDD for her Mac has been sitting in a drawer since the upgrade. Installed in a USB bay with Power-Option boot the HDD had the right OS, it must have been El Capitan that triggered the upgrade to SSD.

Mail took a while, there was a lot to download, and everything is operational. No Unexpected errors.

Her bookmarked sites can be recovered by booting normally and sending herself an email with the URLs. I can recover the passwords for her now that I know about Keychain. Once that is done, I will clone her HDD to the SSD.

Thank you all for walking me through this situation, much appreciated.

 

[jpdemers]

That's a late 2008 machine ... quite old, but perfectly serviceable. What jumps out at me is the titanic inbox of 38,000 emails - I would not be surprised if Mail is choking on that (even if an older version can handle it.) I'd move the oldest 20-30 thousand to a different folder, and see if the slimmed-down inbox solves the problem.
If that doesn't do the trick, I'd save all user data, and have an Apple store do the wipe and OS install, rather than slog through the download/update/upgrade swamp. (Make an appointment if it's a busy shop.) They should be able to do a one-shot installation of El Capitan 10.11.6.

 

[jpdemers]

That's a late 2008 machine ... quite old, but perfectly serviceable. What jumps out at me is the titanic inbox of 38,000 emails - I would not be surprised if Mail is choking on that (even if an older version can handle it.) I'd move the oldest 20-30 thousand to a different folder, and see if the slimmed-down inbox solves the problem.
If that doesn't do the trick, I'd save all user data, and have an Apple store do the wipe and OS install, rather than slog through the download/update/upgrade swamp. (Make an appointment if it's a busy shop.) They should be able to do a one-shot installation of El Capitan 10.11.6.

 

[Jimmysb]

Are you using IMAP or POP3 protocol for your email, if IMAP, I would certainly look at archiving some of the older emails to remove them from the server, obviously if POP3 they no longer reside on the server.

 

[rethel]

> I'd move the oldest 20-30 thousand to a different folder, and see if the slimmed-down inbox solves the problem.

Early on I deleted a few hundred emails on the assumption that it was a volume problem, but Mail still went Unexpected. Mail is snappy, no choking.

< ...have an Apple store do the wipe and OS install, rather than slog through the download/update/upgrade swamp. (Make an appointment if it's a busy shop.) They should be able to do a one-shot installation of El Capitan 10.11.6.

If she thought the Apple store would help I would never have been asked to get involved. The last time she was there the genius refused to help, and told her to come back when she had a newer Mac.

The HDD was replaced by the SSD after El Capital was installed, so it is close to a clean/new install.

> I would certainly look at archiving some of the older emails to remove them from the server

Archiving on the Mac or at gmail?

She started to Delete or Archive the oldest emails early on to reduce the number of Inbox emails. After doing hundreds she complained that Unexpecteds were still happening so I deleted the cache, and 38,000 re-appeared in Mail's Inbox. I would have to verify there are no duplicates between Inbox and Archive before saying it made no difference.

Mail is functioning on the HDD boot with no Unexpecteds to be seen.

Next weekend I will clone the HDD to the SSD. If Unexpected happens again the SSD will be replaced.

 

[pm-r]

In your first posting Randy you wrote "my recommendation is to do a complete reinstallation."

Personally, if that machine is currently running well and without problems and doing everything your wife wants to do, I would not follow that advice and save yourself any possible further hassles or possible problems.


- Patrick
=======

 

[Randy B. Singer]

rethel said:
In your first posting Randy you wrote "my recommendation is to do a complete reinstallation."

Personally, if that machine is currently running well and without problems and doing everything your wife wants to do, I would not follow that advice and save yourself any possible further hassles or possible problems.


- Patrick
=======

You are quoting me out of context, Patrick. I made that recommendation when Mail was constantly crashing for Rethel, and only suggested that it be done as a last resort if other suggests that I offered didn't fix things.

 

[pm-r]

You are quoting me out of context, Patrick. I made that recommendation when Mail was constantly crashing for Rethel,

I didn't mean to take it out of context but just commented on the suggestion in case the member decides to do so regardless of the situation.



- Patrick
=======

 

[rethel]

> I would not follow that advice

It is all in the timing, I was geared up to do a restore and after entering Apple ID and about to walk away up popped the apparently well known "An unexpected error occured..403 Forbidden".

I went to bed that night mentally uttering a few explicatives about the Unexpecteds of the last week. Next morning I woke to the realization that the HDD the SSD replaced was stored in a cabinet. That was the break through, it had been a few feet away the whole time.

It pays to be a packrat.

 

[pm-r]

It pays to be a packrat.

As long as one can remember where one put what one wanted to keep and wear it is actually located.



- Patrick
=======