Could not instantiate mail function

I've searched the forums and have found other threads experiencing this error message, but none that seem to apply to the same problem I am experiencing.

I am seeing the error "Could not instantiate mail function" when I test a purchase. I am using the default PHP mail function. I can send mail from the admin area with no problem. If I create a new account, there is no error but there is no welcome email received either. If I change the mail function to sendmail, the error message goes away, but no mail is received anywhere.

I have installed some mods and realize that I broke things somewhere. I've been doing text compares to the stock ZC 1.37 files, but can't seem to find where things may be wrong.

I'm looking for some hints as to where this error message might be generated from, or other files I should pay attention to.

Thanks,
stage

I was able to resolve this problem, my reply here is intended to assist others who may be faced with troubleshooting issues.

The problem turned out to actually be a handful of issues in an additional file that was added with a MOD located at /includes/modules/"MyTemplate"/create_account.php

After attempting a few standard text compares I still could not locate the problem. I'm using an custom template, so it seemed reasonable that if the issue was related to the template, I would not find the problem doing a text compare with the stock ZC files.

In order to determine that, I changed the template back to the ZC default. Once I did that the problem went away and confirmed the issue was indeed template related.

Ater that it was a matter of backtracking through the MODs I had added. In this one particular file, there were two different MODs using the file and some errors were made applying them both. I carefully studied the code and the required changes to find the errors. Once I did that, all appears to be functioning as expected.

stage