Check-Out Stalls - "in a way that will never complete"

[Dianne]

I'm having a problem with the checkout process stalling after the customer completes the create account page and clicks “submit”. It was previously working fine. I'm hoping this description will help you to help me. It's a little lengthy but the details may be important.


Here's what is happening.


Whenever anyone puts an item into the shopping cart, clicks to checkout and then fills in their name/address to create an account, when they click the submit button, the system hangs and nothing visible happens.


In IE, there is no error message, it just hangs. In firefox, an error message is shown:

"Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete.


The browser has stopped trying to retrieve the requested item. The site is redirecting the request in a way that will never complete.


* Have you disabled or blocked cookies required by this site?
* NOTE: If accepting the site's cookies does not resolve the problem, it is likely a server configuration issue and not your computer."

Cookies are NOT blocked, so that shouldn't be the problem. Nothing has changed on the server. It is a VPS and the web host has confirmed that no changes/settings have been made on their end.


Behind the scenes – while the customer sits there waiting - the account is created (you can see it in the admin panel) and the welcome email is sent. However, the customer is still waiting to be taken to the next page (shipping/billing) of the checkout process.






Here is a little background that I hope is helpful:

1. The checkout process was thoroughly tested and it worked fine.
2. We have GoEmerchant, PayPal and checks/money orders enabled for payment processing. All worked properly.
3. We also have COWOA installed and it worked fine, too.
4. We do NOT have any SEO modules installed.
5. We are using zen cart version 1.3.8a on a Linux server using Apache with PHP 5.2.9 installed.

BEFORE this problem started, after completing the testing of the checkout process over several days, I then added code to the header, and uploaded javascript files (config and menu) for a drop-down chainmenu that was to be used as part of the description on a category page (the menu was added via the admin panel under "edit" for that category).


The menu worked great! However, I didn't test the checkout process after adding the menu so I can't be certain the problem we have now is the menu. I have since removed all the code related to that menu, but the problem still exists.


Researching the forum shows many people getting the same error message but for different reasons. I have not located a solution as yet to resolve this. Several people have mentioned the .htaccess file but I don't know what I would be looking for in there (or which one might be impacted).


I am pasting below a portion of the log files with the hopes that someone will see a clue within them to solving this problem...or can offer suggestions to try.


WEB HOST COMMENTS:
"I monitored the logs in fireplacemall/statistics/logs/ while I was creating my account and it seems like once I click the create account button, ZenCart is getting confused about how to redirect me to the next page.

Here are the excerpts of the access_ssl_log DURING account creation:"

ip-address - - [23/Jun/2009:14:08:14 -0600] "POST /index.php?main_page=create_account HTTP/1.1" 302 - "https://www.fireplacemall.com/index.php?main_page=login" "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.0.11) Gecko/2009060214 Firefox/3.0.11"
ip-address - - [23/Jun/2009:14:08:15 -0600] "GET /index.php?main_page=create_account_success HTTP/1.1" 302 - "https://www.fireplacemall.com/index.php?main_page=login" "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.0.11) Gecko/2009060214 Firefox/3.0.11"
ip-address - - [23/Jun/2009:14:08:15 -0600] "GET /index.php?main_page=checkout HTTP/1.1" 302 - "https://www.fireplacemall.com/index.php?main_page=login" "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.0.11) Gecko/2009060214 Firefox/3.0.11"
ip-address - - [23/Jun/2009:14:08:15 -0600] "GET /index.php?main_page=checkout&action=null HTTP/1.1" 302 - "https://www.fireplacemall.com/index.php?main_page=login" "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.0.11) Gecko/2009060214 Firefox/3.0.11"
ip-address - - [23/Jun/2009:14:08:16 -0600] "GET /index.php?main_page=checkout&action=null HTTP/1.1" 302 - "https://www.fireplacemall.com/index.php?main_page=login" "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.0.11) Gecko/2009060214 Firefox/3.0.11"
ip-address - - [23/Jun/2009:14:08:16 -0600] "GET /index.php?main_page=checkout&action=null HTTP/1.1" 302 - "https://www.fireplacemall.com/index.php?main_page=login" "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.0.11) Gecko/2009060214 Firefox/3.0.11"
ip-address - - [23/Jun/2009:14:08:17 -0600] "GET /index.php?main_page=checkout&action=null HTTP/1.1" 302 - "https://www.fireplacemall.com/index.php?main_page=login" "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.0.11) Gecko/2009060214 Firefox/3.0.11"
ip-address - - [23/Jun/2009:14:08:17 -0600] "GET /index.php?main_page=checkout&action=null HTTP/1.1" 302 - "https://www.fireplacemall.com/index.php?main_page=login" "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.0.11) Gecko/2009060214 Firefox/3.0.11"
ip-address - - [23/Jun/2009:14:08:18 -0600] "GET /index.php?main_page=checkout&action=null HTTP/1.1" 302 - "https://www.fireplacemall.com/index.php?main_page=login" "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.0.11) Gecko/2009060214 Firefox/3.0.11"
ip-address - - [23/Jun/2009:14:08:18 -0600] "GET /index.php?main_page=checkout&action=null HTTP/1.1" 302 - "https://www.fireplacemall.com/index.php?main_page=login" "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.0.11) Gecko/2009060214 Firefox/3.0.11"
ip-address - - [23/Jun/2009:14:08:19 -0600] "GET /index.php?main_page=checkout&action=null HTTP/1.1" 302 - "https://www.fireplacemall.com/index.php?main_page=login" "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.0.11) Gecko/2009060214 Firefox/3.0.11"
ip-address - - [23/Jun/2009:14:08:19 -0600] "GET /index.php?main_page=checkout&action=null HTTP/1.1" 302 - "https://www.fireplacemall.com/index.php?main_page=login" "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.0.11) Gecko/2009060214 Firefox/3.0.11"


Anything you can share that would help solve this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Dianne

.

[Kim]

Try restoring the orignal files and add your mods back one by one, testing as you add each.