Hi,

I moved a DNN 4.9.4 dev environment and its database from my old dev machine to my new dev machine.  I did not use a manually specified machine key so I'm not too suprised that I cannot login using existing passwords. EDIT It turns out that wasn't true - couldn't see it for looking.  I DID have a manually specified machine key and so *now I am surprised* that I could not login using existing ids/passwords.

I try this idea (http://www.onlydnn.com/blog/tabid/55/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/9/How-to-Reset-and-Recover-Host-Account-Password-using-Advanced-Methods.aspx) of registering a new account to get a known password/salt combo in the aspnet_Membership table.  The new account seems to register OK, but when it bounces me back to the home page *I am surprised because I am NOT logged in* (The login link is still in the top rhs).

The new account IS present in both the aspnet_Membership table and the dbo.Users table.

If I attempt to login with the new account the system seems aware of it (trying the new account and the wrong password gives the expected message ("Login Failed, remember that Passwords are case sensitive").  Logging in with the new account and the correct password, bounces me back to the home page (expected) but I am not logged in (unexpected).

I try copying the salt/password combo in the aspnetMembership table from the new account to the host account.  I now get the same behavior with the host account (error message if I use the wrong password; bounce to home page but not logged in if I use the correct password).

There are no interesting new rows in the dbo.EventLog table.  When I attempt a login with a bad password I get a LOGIN_FAILURE, when I login as the host using the correct password then I get a LOGIN_SUPERUSER event.

I'm sure I am missing something fundamental here but I cannot see it. 

How I can resurrect this environment?

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for trying to help. 

I was so unbelieving of what I saw in front of me that I had another go...and it just worked properly.  For the record this is what I did second time around.

I cannot explain why I could not get this the first time.  As an excuse I'll observe that the settings dialogs for IIS (under Win7) are *WAY* different to those under XP.  (I've never tried Vista.)  I spent some time in there and maybe I broke somthing there.

Interesting thought.  Sadly it could not have caused my original problem.  Adding the account was one of the step I had done.  Even when it was not working properly it was both able to read the database (it got to the home page) and write Event rows (it recorded the SUPERUSER_LOGINs).  When there is no suitable account you cannot even get to the home page.