SECURE_KEY not updating, preventing users from keeping a product in a cart

[lynnetted]

Hello!

 

Last week my test site suddenly wouldn't allow users to order a product and then go to any other page on the website and still have that product in the cart. Since this meant the products would disappear from the cart when a user went to checkout - it was a really bad thing.

 

So after poking around for a long time, I realized that the field SECURE_KEY in the ps_cart table was no longer being filled. For reasons that are beyond my comprehension, I erased all the data from the ps_orders table (which also contains the SECURE_KEY field) and now the site works again.

 

Can anyone explain why the site would start working after erasing the ps_orders table?

 

Thanks!

Lynnette