Products

Solutions

Resources

Partners

Community

Blog

About

QA

Ideas Test

New Community Website

Ordinarily, you'd be at the right spot, but we've recently launched a brand new community website... For the community, by the community.

Yay... Take Me to the Community!

Welcome to the DNN Community Forums, your preferred source of online community support for all things related to DNN.
In order to participate you must be a registered DNNizen

HomeHomeUsing DNN Platf...Using DNN Platf...Administration ...Administration ...lost control of portallost control of portal
Previous
 
Next
New Post
9/28/2007 6:08 PM
 

I haven't logged into my portal for serveral months now and the firest thing I did on return was check for an upgrade which I found (4.6).  I then proceeded to upgrade the instance to 4.6 and test.  I don't know if it was the upgrade or simply too long since I've logged in (and forgotten all passwords) but I can't get logged into my portal as admin or host either one.  Does anyone have any recommendations?  The "forgot password" link isn't working as I know that I never got the SMTP settings working.

 
New Post
9/30/2007 7:43 AM
 

When you upgrade or install over an existing edition, you need to back up the web.config file.  It has specific keys for encrypting passwords, and when you upgrade, new keys are generated which need to be changed back in order to be able to login with former username and password.

Do you have a backup of the old web.config file?  If you do, look for   something that looks like this:  <machineKey validationKey="7AB6323B41ADC8992BDD749C31D68B9BB2C1C1D" decryptionKey="F76D0FEFFGT4F5C12BACDD3E96250E631FE1C2AC405EDRP41" decryption="3DES" validation="SHA1" /> in the old web.config and copy it into the new web.config over top of the existing machinekey statements.  There are several of these type of statements you need to copy over to the new web.config, just browse through and you'll see them, copy each one by one and make sure you are replacing the corresponding ones in the new file.

If you don't have a backup of the old web.config file with the machinekey statements, there is a work around for this, but any registered users other than admin and host would also have to be reset in the same way or they would have to re-register.  Anyway, this is what you do:  from your website, register a new user called "tempadmin" and use the same password you use for your host or admin login.  Once you have done that, you need to go into your SQL admin, open the database, find the user table, and copy the contents of the password you just entered for "tempadmin" into your old "host" and "admin" users password fields.  Now you can login with the old password and delete the user "tempadmin".  It's a pain, but it is a way around it.

Hopefully, they are working on this whole machine key issue so that upgrades will automatically copy the old machine keys into the new web.config file.  This happens to a lot of us users, including myself.  It's a pain in the arse when it does happen.

Hope this helps,

Rick


JOHN GIESY
DotNetNuke Hosting Expert

DotNetNuke 7 Hosting $70 /year
DNN4Less.com Team DotNetNuke  

New Post
10/1/2007 10:41 AM
 

Oh my gosh, thank you Rick,

I forgot all about those key/value pairs in the web.config.  Thanks much.

Darin

 
New Post
10/6/2007 7:57 PM
 

Rick - I'm pretty new to DNN, but I've also created this problem by doing a clean install without saving off my original web.config file. I want to use your workaround (thank you for posting it!), but I can't access my website to register a new user. I have the machine key error going on and can't bring up my website or the dnn portal to it. Now what? Thanks!

azanna

 
New Post
10/7/2007 6:58 AM
 

Azanna, you should at least be able to bring up the portal and view it as an unregistered visitor.  If you can't even do that, then there is probably something else going on.  You might contact your web host and see if their tech support can help.  I use WebHost4Life and have always gotten excellent help from them when I really buggered things up, and they were able to retrieve/reset my password on a dnn portal for me once.  See if your tech support personnel can do something like that for you or at maybe help you figure out the problem.   Other than that, does your web host offer auto-install for you?  You may need to just try another clean install.  I did that once using a new database, then by going into the old database I was able to copy and paste the old page html into the new site when adding new pages in the new installation.  I forgot the name of the database table, but it is has "html" in it, "modulehtlm" or something like that.

Maybe someone else more experienced than me will have a better solution.

Hope you can fix it,

Rick


JOHN GIESY
DotNetNuke Hosting Expert

DotNetNuke 7 Hosting $70 /year
DNN4Less.com Team DotNetNuke  

Previous
 
Next
HomeHomeUsing DNN Platf...Using DNN Platf...Administration ...Administration ...lost control of portallost control of portal


These Forums are dedicated to discussion of DNN Platform and Evoq Solutions.

For the benefit of the community and to protect the integrity of the ecosystem, please observe the following posting guidelines:

  1. No Advertising. This includes promotion of commercial and non-commercial products or services which are not directly related to DNN.
  2. No vendor trolling / poaching. If someone posts about a vendor issue, allow the vendor or other customers to respond. Any post that looks like trolling / poaching will be removed.
  3. Discussion or promotion of DNN Platform product releases under a different brand name are strictly prohibited.
  4. No Flaming or Trolling.
  5. No Profanity, Racism, or Prejudice.
  6. Site Moderators have the final word on approving / removing a thread or post or comment.
  7. English language posting only, please.
What is Liquid Content?
Find Out
What is Liquid Content?
Find Out
What is Liquid Content?
Find Out