I have "Allow Anonymous Checkout" checked and "Create User Account For Anonymous Shoppers" checked.  The result is that when one of my customers comes back to make a second order, they are confronted with this message at the checkout:

A user account with this email address exists already! Please login to continue checkout or provide a different email address!

As Alicommerce doesn't mail out the user credentials at the time of ordering the first time, this is causing massive problems for customers who use the anonymous checkout feature and decide that they'd like to shop with us again.  As I have only just been informed of this issue, I'm starting to wonder whether this has partially attributed to my 90% abandoned shopping cart rate.

I need to find a solution to this and as quick as possible.  Would it be possible for you to code in the ability for Alicommerce to e-mail a customer who uses the anonymous checkout feature and provide their username and password for use when they visit the site again? Or to remove the restriction on duplicate e-mail addresses?

I took your advice and disabled user creation, after applying the 2.0.4 hotfix to avoid the bugs with that setting, and rebooting, and now I get the following error on accessing the shopping cart:

AssemblyVersion: 04.08.04
PortalID: 0
PortalName: Action Gamers UK
UserID: 3
UserName: Andrew Cant
ActiveTabID: 57
ActiveTabName: Shopping Cart
RawURL: /Store/ShoppingCart/tabid/57/Default.aspx
AbsoluteURL: /Default.aspx
AbsoluteURLReferrer:
UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; FunWebProducts; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; InfoPath.2)
DefaultDataProvider: DotNetNuke.Data.SqlDataProvider, DotNetNuke.SqlDataProvider
ExceptionGUID: ba74dd82-a5b1-4c7a-ad47-f8072226bf0e
InnerException: Attempted to read or write protected memory. This is often an indication that other memory is corrupt.
FileName:
FileLineNumber: 0
FileColumnNumber: 0
Method: AliSuite.Commerce.DomainModel.Payment.x1ac811c45a1414d1.GetCachedMethods
StackTrace:
Message: DotNetNuke.Services.Exceptions.PageLoadException: Attempted to read or write protected memory. This is often an indication that other memory is corrupt. ---> System.AccessViolationException: Attempted to read or write protected memory. This is often an indication that other memory is corrupt. at AliSuite.Commerce.DomainModel.Payment.x1ac811c45a1414d1.GetCachedMethods(Int32 portalId) at AliSuite.Commerce.DomainModel.Payment.x1ac811c45a1414d1.x33e761bd618a8212(Int32 x59fa4c20532d1d08) at AliSuite.Commerce.DomainModel.PaymentMethods.AllPaymentMethods.GetEnabledMethods(Int32 portalId) at AliSuite.Commerce.Web.StoreFront.Controls.PayPalExpressButton.Page_Load(Object sender, EventArgs e) at System.Web.Util.CalliHelper.EventArgFunctionCaller(IntPtr fp, Object o, Object t, EventArgs e) at System.Web.Util.CalliEventHandlerDelegateProxy.Callback(Object sender, EventArgs e) at System.Web.UI.Control.OnLoad(EventArgs e) at System.Web.UI.Control.LoadRecursive() at System.Web.UI.Control.LoadRecursive() at System.Web.UI.Control.LoadRecursive() at System.Web.UI.Control.LoadRecursive() at System.Web.UI.Control.LoadRecursive() at System.Web.UI.Control.LoadRecursive() at System.Web.UI.Control.LoadRecursive() at System.Web.UI.Control.LoadRecursive() at System.Web.UI.Control.LoadRecursive() at System.Web.UI.Control.LoadRecursive() at System.Web.UI.Control.LoadRecursive() at System.Web.UI.Control.LoadRecursive() at System.Web.UI.Control.LoadRecursive() at System.Web.UI.Control.LoadRecursive() at System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) --- End of inner exception stack trace ---
Source:
Server Name: MAIL

I have now rolled back to where I was yesterday so that I can at least take orders for the first time from a customer.  Can you please look into this issue?

My website is running in 32-bit mode.  I know you fixed the bug with x64 W2k3 servers with the last release but I haven't switched over to native 64-bit on this website yet. Being a W2k3 server, I'm running IIS-6.

No, even microsoft support staff can not explain what can be the exact cause.

Not sure what's exactly going on with your installation. We have others customers running alicommerce 2.x on 32-bit win2003/2008 without any issue.

We probably can create a custom build for you, but not this week, maybe sometime next week. Also you have to pay for it. We're working on the next release, a custom build causes a lot of headache.

Admin - User Accounts - User Settings.  This is where the setting is shown, but it's actually controlled by the ASP.NET Membership Provider configured in the Framework 2.0 settings in IIS.

Also, thinking about the problem with the hotfix, it must be related to the changes made to the code in that dll that was made for the hotfix to work.  The shopping cart works fine before deploying the hotfix, but not afterwards, so would point to the changes made in the code.  If you remember, my server also hosts our Exchange 2007 services so must run with the x64 variant of Framework 2.0, although I managed to get a workaround going whereby although the x64 framework was loaded the server allowed 32-bit operations as well (for Alicommerce 1.2.8 to work when we were using that).  Maybe there's a call to the framework components in this new code in the dll which is 32-bit framework specific?  Considering that my Exchange services stop if I change the Framework configuration, I can't change this to 32-bit framework.

You have stated that the software is now 64-bit compliant (v2.0.4).  However, you have also stated that the hotfix works fine on 32-bit servers and all your Win2008 customers using 64-bit IIS have had no problems after switching to 32-bit mode.  I can only conclude that post-hotfix your software is no longer 64-bit compliant.  I don't feel that I should pay for a custom build to fix the issues with your 64-bit compliance, and this is only going to be more of a problem for you as more 64-bit servers come online and start to use your software.

On top of this, I will assume that v2.0.5 and future releases will feature the code that is existent in your hotfix and so all future releases will cause my server to stop serving customers.  This causes long-term issues with choosing to continue to use your software.  Sooner or later you will need to address this issue. You have a great product, Frank, and I'd love to continue to use it, but if I can't serve customers then my business is dead in the water.

So, my options are:

1. Upgrade to Win2008 so I can downgrade my IIS to 32-bit, because your software can't take 64-bit operations anymore;
2. Add another server, increasing my costs so that I can downgrade to a 32-bit operating system, because your software can't take 64-bit operations anymore;
3. Take offence at your dismissive attitude towards a customer problem and buy another e-commerce solution.

Thanks for your response. At least I know where I stand as a valued customer now.