Unable to load Admin pages

I have not logged in to Admin in several months. Friday, I decided to add a few products. My login in and password have been saved on the computer for several years. When I hit the Submit button it does nothing for about a minute then I get an error:

"Not Found

The requested URL was not found on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request."

So, I looked into the log folder and found lots (100s) of errors all saying about the same thing:

"yDEBUG-adm-20261004-033312-268043.log ( ASCII text )

[04-Oct-2026 03:38:12 America/Boise] PHP Notice: Email Error: SMTP connect() failed. https://github.com/PHPMailer/PHPMailer/wiki/Troubleshooting

in /home4/schemat2/public_html/Test/includes/functions/functions_email.php on line 511"

Line 511 in that file is shown here with *** before and after:

// If a mail-related error (reported by PHPMailer) occurred, treat the 'recipients_failed' message as a special

        // case, logging to a differently-named log file to make finding these issues easier.  Otherwise, log a PHP notice.

        //

        if ($ErrorInfo !== '') {

            $mail_langs = $mail->getTranslations();

            if (strpos($ErrorInfo, $mail_langs['recipients_failed']) === false) {

               // Don't log SMTP rejected spam; log others

               if (!str_contains($ErrorInfo, 'spam content')) {

               \*\*\*\*\*\*    **trigger_error('Email Error: ' . $ErrorInfo);** \*\*\*\*\*\*

               }

            } else {

                $log_prefix = (IS_ADMIN_FLAG === true) ? '/myDEBUG-bounced-email-adm-' : '/myDEBUG-bounced-email-';

                $log_date = new DateTime();

                error_log('Request URI: ' . $\_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] . PHP_EOL . PHP_EOL . $ErrorInfo, 3, DIR_FS_LOGS . $log_prefix . $log_date->format('Ymd-His-u') . '.log');

            }

I checked my emails and found them all to be working. Then it occurred to me that I have been getting notices from Paypal that I got a payment from a customer. Checked my Paypal balance - there was the payment. BUT no emails from Zen Cart telling me what was purchased. I used a login I created when I first started using ZC and signed in. Found a digital download for a few bucks and purchased it. Got the email from Paypal that I got money. Got another one from the Paypal acoount I used to make the purchase that I had sent the money. And sure enough I got the download link for the file I purchased.

I then remembered several months ago I had deleted some old email accounts that I wasn't using any more. I MAY have accidentally deleted the Admin email account. Would that be what is causing this?

Over the weekend I used FTP to reload all the files from a backup I had done earlier this year. Nothing changed. I can't get into the admin but I do have access to all the files. I expect there is some configuration file where the admin email account and password are defined. Somebody reading this does know where I can find it. It's a start.

Thanks in advance,

Lee

If you can't login to your admin, follow these directions:

https://docs.zen-cart.com/user/troubleshooting/reset_admin_password/

I've already tried that. I don't get a reset link....

Please see Section 5 in that help file.

I went into the database and changed the admin email address to one I know that works flawlessly.

It allowed me to sign in. Still would not send emails to customers.

Changed the email transport method from PHP to sendmail. That worked.

Thanks SWGUY for sending me in the right direction.