thanks Eric, so far we are still not receiving the email in the admin's e email address either.
As for "commenting out" I'm afraid PHP is still russian for me, I don't know how to comment out the direct pay method. I did try substituting code I found here on the forums, but for some reason after I did, then the paypal standard, even though it went all the way through the process did not work.
The most recent test I ran was under the "live" gateway for both the site and for paypal using a .01 transaction. As long as I have the direct pay method on the page (unused), the transaction worked great. When I "commented out" (using the method I found on the forum) the direct pay, the transaction SAID it was successful, but didn't go through. I realize I must be doing something wrong, taking out too much or misplacing something...just don't know what.