Support

Admin Tools, in the case you described, does use Joomla!'s error handling methods to display the message you described, also telling it to use code 403. Joomla! will then try to use your template to display that error page. We are aware that some very badly written templates (like those from YooTheme) have bugs in their error pages and end up throwing a PHP error which manifests itself as 500 Internal Server Error pages or white pages.

I would recommend asking your template provider for a solution. If you are using a YooTheme template don't bother, they have already been told about the problem existing in pretty much all of their templates by numerous clients but simply don't do anything. In any other case the template provider should be able to help you.

Have you tried it on a site which doesn't have third party plugins which may try to intercept the error page and in the process create a fatal PHP error? I am asking because on all of our sites and on the vast majority of our clients' sites it all works just fine, I.e. When no badly written third party code which interferes with core Joomla! Features is present.

Oh, I just saw that you have an obsolete version of PHP and a very old version of Admin Tools. I know for a fact that the current version of Admin Tools (2.6.0) on PHP 5.3 and 5.4 does work correctly. It is possible that you have run into an old bug that has since been fixed. Unfortunately we can't offer support for these old versions of Admin Tools.

I strongly recommend that you upgrade your site to PHP 5.3 or 5.4. PHP 5.2 is end of life since 11th January 2011, that's exactly three years next Saturday. It is ripe with known security issues which cannot be worked around by PHP-level security software like Admin Tools, compromising the security of your site. Moreover it's up to 7 times slower than PHP 5.4. Remember, since almost two years ago a faster site ranks better in search engine results. For these reasons alone I advise you to upgrade PHP to version 5.3 or, even better, 5.4. Then you can use the current version of Admin Tools which doesn't have the reported issue.

You're welcome!