VERY Slow when creating customers and completing checkout

Good morning!

First off, here are my system specs:

System hostname:WebServer
Kernel and CPU:SunOS 5.10 on sun4u
CPU load averages:0.03 (1 min) 0.05 (5 mins) 0.09 (15 mins)
Real memory:1001.42 MB total, 851.84 MB used
Virtual memory:5.02 GB total, 0 bytes used
Local disk space:62.51 GB total, 8.25 GB used
Hosting Information:Internal Server not put into production yet

Now, here are my software specs:

Operating system:Sun Solaris 10
ZenCart:You are presently using: v1.3.9a Fresh Install - No Mods
HTTP Server:Apache/2.2.11
PHP Version:5.2.9 (Zend: 2.2.0) PHP Memory Limit: 128M
Database:MySQL 5.1.46-log
Database Data Size:356 kB
Database Index Size:468 kB

Now to my issues...

I can get the system installed with the store demo and bring it up perfectly fine. When I click on products and browse the catalog it fly's through, and everything comes up, shows the pictures nicely and all.

HOWEVER: When I create a customer, it takes WAY TOO LONG to write the customers information and return back to the store. And when I check out, it adds to my cart, I can breeze pretty much through all 3 steps of checking out, until it comes to "Confirming The Order". Then, it does the same as writing customer information. It takes WAY TOO LONG to return back to saying thanks for the order. If I click refresh while waiting, I can see it duplicate the order in the admin area.

Is there anything anyone can think of off the top of their head that I can do to speed this up!? I ran Zen-Cart for over 3 years on a Windows 2K3 server flawlessly! I am trying to move away from a Windows Server environment, and utilize a Sun Sparc machine that I have.

I also have the store demo installed, and functioning on my DMZ port at westcoastfiero.dnsalias.com if someone would like to see what the heck I am talking about. I also have "Display Page Parsing" turned on as well.

Thanks in advance for the help! If anyone needs anymore information, please just ask!

Sounds like you've got a bad email engine on the server.

Turn off all email support by going to Admin->Configuration->Email Options->Send Email? and set it to False.

Then everything will likely be fast.

Then you can sort out whatever is wrong with your server's internal email capabilities before re-enabling email features in Zen Cart.

DrByte:

Sounds like you've got a bad email engine on the server.

Problem Solved! It was setup to send mail via PHP, so I will change it to use Sendmail and test that way!

I was so getting ready to install MySQL on a Windows 2K3 server this morning here on the network, and see if that fixed the problem, but no need now!

Thanks for the support!

NOTE TO ZEN-CART STAFF

I think my problem, along with DrByte's answer may not be a bad idea for a FAQ! :)

FAQ already here: http://www.zen-cart.com/wiki/index.php/Troubleshoot_-_Email_Problems