AJAX Nearly identitcal xmlhttp, one works the other does not? - php

Question

I'm having a weird problem...
I inserted an alert here:
if (xmlhttp.readyState==4 && xmlhttp.status==200)
{
document.getElementById("myDiv").innerHTML=xmlhttp.responseText;
alert('fine');
}else {
alert('fail');
}
Both functions that call the xmlhttp alert "fail" but one works while the other does not.
I checked that the serialize was working, and it is, I get the written value in the form.
The php script doesn't show an error... any idea what could be going on? The calls are separate, not called simultaneously, I pretty much replicated the working one for the other call.
This is the full xmlhttp function of the working one
function insertEntry()
{
var data = $("#entry").serialize();
var xmlhttp;
if (window.XMLHttpRequest)
{// code for IE7+, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari
xmlhttp=new XMLHttpRequest();
}
else
{// code for IE6, IE5
xmlhttp=new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
}
xmlhttp.onreadystatechange=function()
{
if (xmlhttp.readyState==4 && xmlhttp.status==200)
{
document.getElementById("myDiv").innerHTML=xmlhttp.responseText;
alert('fine');
}else {
alert('fail');
}
}
xmlhttp.open("POST","write-script.php",true);
xmlhttp.setRequestHeader("Content-type","application/x-www-form-urlencoded");
xmlhttp.send(data);
clearup();
showSuccess();
}
Not working, the alerts go all the way through
function insertNote()
{
alert('clicked');
var note = $("#note").serialize();
alert(note);
var xmlhttp;
if (window.XMLHttpRequest)
{// code for IE7+, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari
xmlhttp=new XMLHttpRequest();
}
else
{// code for IE6, IE5
xmlhttp=new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
}
xmlhttp.onreadystatechange=function()
{
if (xmlhttp.readyState==4 && xmlhttp.status==200)
{
// document.getElementById("myDiv").innerHTML=xmlhttp.responseText;
alert('fine');
}else {
alert('fail');
}
}
xmlhttp.open("POST","write-new-note.php",true);
xmlhttp.setRequestHeader("Content-type","application/x-www-form-urlencoded");
xmlhttp.send(note);
alert('done');
}