Install says successful but wont work

I am trying to install opencart on godaddy's host. I go through the setup process, connect to the database fine and then I get to the final step where it reminds you to delete the install directory and it says install successful, and gives you the two images to click on the, admin and the store itself. If i click on the store image it takes me back to the license agreement before you start the setup and just runs the setup again. If i click on the admin image it pops up the page with an error on it.

I can post the error if it will help. I tried installing 1.4.7 and 1.4.6 and couldn't get either of them to work. I just recently tried installing this on a 1and1 host and I had no problems. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks

This forum is littered with comments and problems with godaddy,
I've not tried them myself, so can't speak from personal experience, but by the weight of comments, i'd steer clear.

yea I have kind of seen that as I have looked through some of the topics. However it is for a client and he has prepaid I think 10 years already, so there is no way I can switch providers.

I tried setting up Open Cart on GoDaddy as well and ultimately gave up. Their Apache version was at 1.3.3, which is very outdated and is not even supported by the Apache project anymore. With something as simple as that, who knows what other server software / settings are not maintained up to date. I was however able to get the store up and running, but could not add any product images even when I changed folder permissions. I've had other problems with GoDaddy as well and have adopted a "No GoDaddy" policy for future clients.

I assure you this is not an Open Cart issue, but is a GoDaddy issue as I have set up Open Cart on several hosts, both using LInux and Windows. All installations worked flawlessly.

My suggestion would be to convince your client to use GoDaddy's in house shopping cart.

I guess I should of probably added that the GoDaddy's shopping cart is not free, but is guaranteed to work on their system. I've set it up and it works okay, however, you are VERY VERY VERY restricted with what you can do with the cart.

Are you sure your client didn't just prepay for the domain? GoDaddy only has a 36 month hosting options. Even though they purchased the domain through GoDaddy, you can host the website elsewhere.

I have just tried to install OpenCart 1.4.0 on my Windows XP workstation for a trial.
I have Apache 2.2, PHP 5 and MySQL 5.1. The installation process ran smoothly and I got to the same message about successful installation that hennessy described. I have removed the installation directory as it was suggested and clicked on the shop's button to have a look. Unfortunately just an empty browser screen appeared. The same occurs if I try to use the administrative surface.
As I see the database has been created successfully and filled with some demo data.

The Apache log file says the followings:
...
[Fri Jul 09 15:40:07 2010] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] PHP Warning: date(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'Europe/Paris' for '2.0/DST' instead in C:\\Program Files\\Apache Software Foundation\\Apache2.2\\htdocs\\www\\bolt\\system\\startup.php on line 48, referer: http://localhost:8080/
[Fri Jul 09 15:40:07 2010] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] PHP Fatal error: Call to a member function get() on a non-object in C:\\Program Files\\Apache Software Foundation\\Apache2.2\\htdocs\\www\\bolt\\index.php on line 67, referer: http://localhost:8080/

The 67th line of index.php is:
if ($config->get('config_error_display')) {

The OpenCart log files contains the followings:
2010-07-09 15:40:07 - PHP Warning: session_start(): open(%SystemRoot%\Temp\sess_6jatsnm1hjiktg4okdn5eohkp0, O_RDWR) failed: No such file or directory (2) in C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\htdocs\www\bolt\system\library\session.php on line 11

My SystemRoot environment variable is set to C:\Windows and there is a Temp subfolder under it. The referred temporary session file does not exist.

The 11th line of session.php is:
session_start();

Any advice is appreciated.

Is there a reason why you chose 1.4.0 instead of 1.4.8b?

looks like your session folder for php is not writable by php.

Dear adrunkentheory,
I would like to create a Hungarian WEB Shop as a first step and the Hungarian translation is available for version 1.4.0 only. That is the reason why I do not use 1.4.8b for the moment.

Dear Xsecrets,
Thank you for the hint. I will check PHP access rights on Monday.

vacker wrote:Dear adrunkentheory,
I would like to create a Hungarian WEB Shop as a first step and the Hungarian translation is available for version 1.4.0 only. That is the reason why I do not use 1.4.8b for the moment.

Dear Xsecrets,
Thank you for the hint. I will check PHP access rights on Monday.

[HOW To] Upgrade older languages to current OC version

On Windows XP Home there is no standard GUI to check or change the access rights to a folder. Nevertheless, I made some changes regarding the access rights by the CACLS command line utility without any visible effect on OpenCart behavior. The error message about the missing session file still persists. Another option would be to change the path that OpenCart / PHP uses for temporary files. Do you know where is this path specified?

I will also try to set OpenCart up on a real server this week. I hope I will have more luck with that.

If you're not on a WAMP server, ignore me. If you're on a local WAMP server try this:

When you right click the folder and go to properties there should be a Security Tab where you can modify the permissions.
If you do not have the Security Tab you can activate it by going to Tools > Folder Options > View > Uncheck "Use simple file sharing" or "Use simple folder permissions" (I can't remember what it is named, but it's something similar to those.)

That should activate a Security Tab where you can change the control, modify, read, write, execute file permissions.

----
To change the Temporary file path, there's a php.ini file in the bin directory of the active Apache instance. This is a copy of phpForApache.ini of the active PHP instance. Modify the php.ini. I'm pretty sure you can also do it through the WAMP server menu, but it's been a long time since I've dealt with WAMP.

Honestly, you should just save time and efforts and wait and set it up on a "real" server as you put it. I have not had any issues on both Windows and Unix environments. If you go with a Windows server, you will still need to change the folder permissions via your hosting control panel, but that should be very simple. I had it done within a couple minutes.

I know the subject has changed slightly, but I just wanted to mention that I have successfully installed this cart on GoDaddy's Linux host as well as MediaTemple's shared cloud sites server.
The only server I've had issues which made the system unusable was RackSpace's shared cloud sites server.

As the "real" server is not yet available I continued playing with my Windows XP Home.
On Windows XP Home there is no Security Tab on the folder properties dialog and there is no way to uncheck the simple file sharing because there is no such checkbox in the corresponding list. As I know this approach would work with Windows XP Pro.

So I followed the second suggestion and changed the temporary file folder to a folder, that the installer's PHP code already wrote successfully. The PHP.ini file I had to modify was located in my "c:\Program Files\PHP" folder.
The modified line is the following: After changing the directory the session file has been successfully created and I managed to log in into the administrative surface, which seems to work correctly.

Unfortunately the main page of the shop is sill not working, but in this case no log file was created in the WEB shop's system/logs folder.

Dear adrunkentheory, Xsecrets and others,

Thank you very much for your support. OpenCart is able to run on my Windows XP Home as well.
I was the reason of the problem why the shop pages did not display correctly on my installation: previously when I was trying to figure out the original problem I have made some changes in the index.php page of the shop, which now caused the problem. Now I restored the original code and the shop runs smoothly.

If everything works such well as it looks like at first glance then I will surely put it on a real server.