mail.app, ichat and date & time pane hang on load

[Thank The Cheese]

When I load iChat or Mail.app, they load as fast as normal, but the windows are not usable for a few minutes (MINUTES!) -- I just get the beachball until it's good and ready. Also my date & time preference pane also takes a long time, though not always as long as mail and ichat, so I'm not sure if it's the same problem.

It would seem to be some kind of network issue, as it seems to be hanging at the point where it has loaded and is ready to do what it has to do over the internet.

I logged in to my dummy account which has not been touched since the ast fresh install of OS X a few weeks ago and I DON"T get the same problems, so clearly it has something to do with my settings.

An update is a possible cause. iChat has been doing it for a long time before any major updates, but mail.app issue seemed to start around the 10.4.9 update, and the date and time issue started after installing the daylight savings patch (as a side note...why was the daylight savings patch 10MB? seems like an awful lot for such a simple fix!).

ANyone have any ideas what I can try? I installed parallels recently, do you think tha could be resonsible? I notice I not have "parallels Host-Guest' and "parallels NAT' in my network prefs. could this be causing issues?

[Thank The Cheese]

I believe I have narrowed down what the problem is. The Date & Time appears to be the source of the issues. Whenever OS X tries to get the current date from wherever it gets it, that is what causes it to hang.

I noticed that when I hit reply in mail.app it would hang for a good minute before finally snapping into action. The first thing itdoes after it stopps stalling is print on the screen:

00/00/2007, at 12:00 AM, John Smith wrote:

...as it always does when you reply to a message. Seeing as I am having similar lag issues with the date/time pref pane that gave me an idea.

Mail.app no longer hangs when I first launch it, and I think it is because I deleted all draft emails (for ever draft reply I had open, every time load up mail.app it would need to retrieve the latest date/time info -- hence the lag.

This is the same issue with iChat -- it displays the date and time when you launch it, which would explain why that, too, hangs on load.

I still have no idea how to fix it, but I am hoping this clue might give someone an idea I am wondering if the daylight saving update is the culprit all along.

[T3ch13]

I was having the same issue with the Date and Time Preference, then I UNCHECKED the set date and time automatically and this seemed to take care of the problem for me.