Help! Orders long time to save - 2013 Lost connection to MySQL server during query

Hi All,

Been a while, but needing the community's help with this one...

Have seen other users with a similar issue in the past, unfortunately though I can't seem to get this problem resolved:

We recently moved one of our clients off of an old server and onto a new one - files and DB transferred fine, tested and things looked good...or so I thought :-)

Running through a transaction and hitting 'Confirm' on Step 3 of the checkout phase results in a serious lagtime (upwards to a minute), and we run into the following error:

'2013 Lost connection to MySQL server during query'

Order saves itself to DB, displays in admin but the customer ends up seeing this. Occassionally (perhaps 1 out of 6? tests) results in the Thank You page properly loading...

Here's what we have running...

Server Info (as displayed in admin):
Zen Cart 1.2.5, Database Patch Level: 1.2.5 (I know, older than dirt...)
Database: MySQL 4.1.21-log
PHP Version: 4.4.3 (Zend: 1.3.0)

Domain: screenprintcatalog.com/cdn

Thinking this is either a server issue or a MySQL bug (as described in previous threads) - also our servers default timeout (mysql.connect_timeout) is listed at 60 - but of course upgrading PHP or MySQL (or changing timeouts) it appears isn't an option because of the site being on a shared hosting package...

ANY help is greatly appreciated - suffered a long week last week and don't want to run into a new Monday with errors...

Thanks all,

JWillard

Timeouts for database connections can be hard to track down. If this is a shared hosting environment, it would be interesting to see what the tech support folks are saying about it.

But, if the issue is that the checkout processing is taking too long, then it may be hard to blame the database.

What payment methods are active on your site? What module is being used when these timeouts occur? Are there delays in getting a reply back from the payment gateway?

In these orders, are there a lot of attributes tied to the products being purchased?

Are emails being sent properly when these orders are placed? Do they contain all the right information? What email-transport method is being used?