Mail connection errors

rmdpub

Registered
I have three e-mail accounts set up in Mail 3.6. Since late October, one account has been experiencing intermittent connection errors to the server.

"The attempt to read data from the server "myserver.mywebhost.com" failed."
"The attempt to connect to the server "myserver.mywebhost.com" failed."
"The connection to server "myserver.mywebhost.com" failed because port 110 timed out."

These errors last 15 minutes or so and go on and off all day. I still receive my e-mail fine, albeit somewhat delayed when I'm experiencing a connection error.

Three other clients also using Mail with e-mail accounts on the same server (different domains) have also been experiencing the same connection errors over roughly the same time period.

I have complained to the webhost thinking it is a problem on their end. They tested each account and claim that the problem is with Mail.

Skeptical, I recreated my problem account in Thunderbird. At the same time I was having connection errors in Mail, the account in Thunderbird worked fine. In the end, I could not reproduce the connection errors in Thunderbird.

I'm at a loss what to tell my clients.

My set up: Power PC G5; Mac OS X 10.5.8; Mail 3.6
 
Plus if the Chain fix doesn't work then we can reset Mail without loosing saved email (email in the Inbox will be blown away so save those messages to a separate folder first). Follow these steps.

1. Write down your email server settings, this is important!

2. Quit Mail.

3. Navigate to the folder /YourHardDrive/Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/ and find the file com.apple.mail.plist and put it into your Trash Can (but don't empty Trash just yet).

4. Get the email server settings you wrote down and the relaunch Mail and put those server settings back in.


These steps will reset Mail. Unlike Windows you don't have to reinstall programs, just reset OS X programs by throwing out their Preferences.

This should fix your problem, Good Luck.
 
Thanks for the replies.

I'm hesitant to rebuild my keychain as I've got 67 items in the log in one alone. I did do keychain first aid and it found problems which I repaired. We'll see whether that helps any.

Next will be deleting the prefs.

But I still don't understand how this can afflict 3 other clients using Mail at the same time?
 
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