Currently whenever I start OS X (10.6.2), mail.app starts up with a "Welcome to Mail" dialog, asking me to create an account by inputting name, email address, and password. If I cancel this dialog, the app just hangs and I have to force quit it.
I do not use the mail.app and I do not want it to start up with OS X. I have checked the login items and it is NOT present in the login items list for my account. I have also ctrl+clicked the doc icon that appears and confirmed there is no option enabled for "Run at Login".
If I go ahead and just spam continue through the dialogs for a new account, I can get through to actually using Mail and accessing preferences. I cannot find a startup option in Mail preferences. After I have completed this, if I now restart, Mail does NOT open automatically. However as soon as I delete the account that I created, it once again goes back to popping up a "Welcome to Mail" dialog every time I startup and login.
As best as I can tell, it seems OS X checks if an account exists in the Mail app, and if it does not, it will always start up a "Welcome to Mail" dialog on login, regardless if the Mail app is set to run via login items, etc.
This is incredibly frustrating given I have no intention of using the Mail app. I realize I can easily leave account info in there (perhaps even disable the account via preferences), but this behavior is ridiculous.
Update:
Further tested this by creating a new account. I confirmed that the dialog will still start up and that mail is not set to start on login; neither via Accounts -> Login Items or right clicking it on the dock and checking for the option there.
Best Answer
This is probably related to iCal.
I have the same problem and I use iCal in sync with my Google calendar, which is configured to send emails for certain events.
Disabling
Automatically receive invitations from mailin iCal preferences does not help.This post has some more info:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1853470