Could not instantiate mail function

[merkk]

Hi all,

trying move an old joomla install from an old server to a new server, prior to upgrading it to the latest version of joomla.

old server is win2008, new server is win 2016 - php 5.4.10 running on both
I've copied all the joomla files, as well as copying the php install folder from the old to the new server. I seem to have the joomla site mostly working. But sending email from the new server is not working. There is a working mail server on both the old and new. I've updated the php.ini SMTP setting to point to the updated host. I've confirmed the smtp server is accepting connections by telneting to port 25 and got a response. Although from the error, it sounds like the problem is occuring before it even tries to connect to the server.

I'm not sure what to check at this point. All the files are the same between the two servers, including file paths. A few configuration settings have been changed just to reflect new server name/ip etc

I'm not even sure if this is a joomla problem - feels more like it's an issue with php. But just thought I'd post here in case anyone has any ideas?

[Per Yngve Berg]

Have you tried to set SMTP in Joomla instead of phpmailer?

[merkk]

Have you tried to set SMTP in Joomla instead of phpmailer?

no - my thinking was to try and keep everything the same between the old and new servers since I thought that would be the best way to not introduce any complications. Since this is basically a copy of the joomla site on the old server, I can't think of any reason the email wouldn't work since it does work on the old site.

I just switched it to SMTP in the admin panel. I'm not sure if it helped or not. I now get an error saying the from address failed. It's a valid email address, hosted on the local mail server. And from what i can tell, this error is coming from joomla/php, not the mail server, since there's nothing in the mail servers log files showing any attempt to use the email address i created.