phpmailer error Could not instantiate mail function on WINDOWS server - php

Question

I have this weird error coming up from phpmailer (Version: 5.1 ):
exception 'phpmailerException' with message 'Could not instantiate mail function.' in C:\Inetpub\vhosts\mydomain\httpdocs\myscript\protected\components\phpmailer\class.phpmailer.php:687 Stack trace: #0 C:\Inetpub\vhosts\mydomain\httpdocs\myscript\protected\components\phpmailer\class.phpmailer.php(578): PHPMailer->MailSend('Date: Wed, 2 Oc...', '--b1_3c2b33630c...')
FYI: I am trying to send a zip file that's around 4.5MB big. But before that the script generates around 50 PDFs and adds them/creates the zip file which then gets attached to a phpmailer object and sent. (I am not using SMTP).
I know this has been asked before.. but the solutions I have found are all based on linux server involving increasing the limit on postfix.
But how do I solve this issue if the site is hosted on a windows machine ? I have plesk control panel.
Thanks in advance for your help.
[EDIT]
Here's the code snippet just incase it helps:
foreach($vars as $PDFKEY)
{
if($PDFKEY != null)
{
if((int)$PDFKEY > 0 )
{
$filename = $this->CreatePDF($PDFKEY);
$emailarr[$PDFKEY['email']][] = $filename;
$emailIdarr[$company->email][] = $PDFKEY['email'];
}
}
}
sleep(20);
//print_r($emailarr);die;
$emailTemplate = Yii::app()->params['EmailTemplate'];
$body = file_get_contents($emailTemplate);
$body = eregi_replace("[\]",'',$body);
try
{
$mail = new PHPMailer(true);
if(strtolower(Yii::app()->params['SMTPStatus']) == "enabled")
{
$mail->IsSMTP(); // telling the class to use SMTP
$mail->SMTPKeepAlive = true; // SMTP connection will not close after each email sent
$mail->Host = Yii::app()->params['SMTPHost']; // sets the SMTP server
$mail->Port = Yii::app()->params['SMTPPort']; // set the SMTP port for the GMAIL server
if(strtolower(Yii::app()->params['SMTPAuthStatus']) == "enabled")
{
$mail->SMTPAuth = true; // enable SMTP authentication
$mail->Username = Yii::app()->params['SMTPUsername']; // SMTP account username
$mail->Password = Yii::app()->params['SMTPPassword']; // SMTP account password
}
}
$mail->SetFrom(Yii::app()->params['EmailSendFrom']);
$mail->AddReplyTo(Yii::app()->params['EmailSendFrom']);
$mail->Subject = Yii::app()->params['EmailSubject'];;
$savePath = Yii::app()->params['PdfSavePath'];
$mail->AddBCC(trim(Yii::app()->params['EmailBCC']));
$b = true;
$toEmailAdded = array();
$ccEmailAdded = array();
$companyCCEmailAdded = array();
foreach($emailarr as $email=>$attachmentArr )
{
try
{
if(!in_array($email, $toEmailAdded))
{
$toEmailAdded[] = $email;
$mail->AddAddress($email);
}
if(isset($_POST['emailcc']) && strlen($_POST['emailcc']) > 0)
{
if(!in_array($_POST['emailcc'], $ccEmailAdded))
{
$ccEmailAdded[] = trim($_POST['emailcc']);
$mail->AddCC(trim($_POST['emailcc']));
}
}
$companycc = trim($emailNamearr[$email]['companyccemail']);
if(isset($companycc) && strlen($companycc) > 0)
{
foreach(explode(',',trim($companycc)) as $cc)
{
if(!in_array($cc, $companyCCEmailAdded))
{
$companyCCEmailAdded[] = trim($cc);
$mail->AddCC(trim($cc));
}
}
}
if(count($attachmentArr) > 1)
{
$zipFileName = "Archieve-".uniqid().".zip";
if($this->create_zip($attachmentArr, $zipFileName, true)) {
$mail->AddAttachment($SavePath.$zipFileName); // attachment
sleep(20);
}
} else
{
foreach($attachmentArr as $attachment)
{
$mail->AddAttachment($SavePath.$attachment); // attachment
}
}
$msgbody = str_replace("<%EMAILSENTDATE%>", date('d/m/Y', strtotime($emailNamearr[$email]['serviced'])) , $body );
if(isset($emailNamearr[$email]))
{
$msgbody = str_replace("<%CLIENTNAME%>", "for ".$emailNamearr[$email]['company'] , $msgbody );
}
else $msgbody = str_replace("<%CLIENTNAME%>", "" , $msgbody );
$mail->MsgHTML($msgbody);
try
{
$mail->Send();
}catch(Exception $e)
{
echo "<br/><br/>$e<br/><br/>".$e;die;
}
//echo "$email <br/>";
$mail->ClearAddresses();
$mail->ClearAttachments();
$mail->ClearCCs();
} catch (Exception $e) {
echo $e->getMessage(); //Boring error messages from anything else!
$b = false;
}
}
}

Answer 1

After tearing out quite a bit of hair on my head I think I kind of sort out the issue. Here's what I did (in case anyone else is facing the same problem )
Under IIS->My Website->error pages->Edit Features Settings By default Detailed errors for local request is selected for security purposes.
This threw the 500 error but the actual cause was hidden. By changing it to "Detailed errors" the actual error was revealed which was :
"FastCGI process exceeded" I believe by default it's 30 secs.
So even though I've max_execution_limit = 300 the process was getting stopped/failed because of the php-cgi.exe 's execution time limit.
To solve this:
edit %windir%\system32\inetsrv\config\applicationHost.config file to extend the php-cgi.exe execution time limit. set activityTimeout:3600 and requestTimeout:3600 .. i set 3600 to be on safe side and because i could.
And then the application ran just fine.
Hope this helps saving the hair on head for someone.

Answer 2

I think:
Yii::app()->params['SMTPStatus'] is not 'enabled'
so phpmailer uses php native mail function witch, I think, is not configured in your php.ini
Hope this helps