joomla, php, windows server - Could not instantiate mail function

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Moving an old Joomla 2.5.x install from an old win 2008 server to a win 2016 server. We will be upgrading to the latest version of joomla/php in the future, but for now I'm trying to get the current (old) version working. PHP is 5.4.10

I have the joomla site itself working. Although the contact form does not work. It throws the error 'Could not instantiate mail function' when you try to send.

Joomla is running under the same php install - i copied it from the old server. The joomla config is the same as well, except for updating hostname/paths etc where relevant. I've searched through all the files on the new server looking to see if anything was pointing to the mail server on the old machine - did not find anything. And i have confirmed the mail server on the new machine is working - sent an email to myself as well as telneted to port 25 to confirm it's accepting local connections. But I'm guessing from the error, it's failing before it even tried to connect to the mail server. And the file paths should be the same between the two servers as well.

At this point my guess would be there's some difference between IIS 7.x and IIS 10.x that's causing this, but that's just a guess. Hopefully someone else might have a more specific guess? ;)

thanks in advance for any help.

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phpwindows-server-2008joomla2.5windows-server-2016
Maybe this post can helps : stackoverflow.com/questions/30648462/… – Fky
Unfortunately i didn't see anything in there that would help in my situation. I actually saw that same post before asking my question. The php.ini file has been updated to point to the new mail server (running locally). and the php install is the same as on the old server, which can and does send email. So I'm kinda stumped as to what's off. – merk

1 Answers

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Ok, looks like the issue isn't with the mailer, it's with dns. It's not resolving anything.

$dnsrecs = dns_get_record('google.com'); returns dns query failed. However, dns on the server itself appears to be working. nslookup from the command prompt works. I even tried switching name servers to googles server - which also works from the command prompt but not from within php. Since this is an entirely different issue from the original topic, I'll mark this as answered and open a new question.