I don't think this is a machine key issue

I have recently had my work PC replaced, on which I had several local "test" copies of DNN sites.

For each one of them though, I have had trouble moving it onto my new Windows 7 (x64) machine.

I am using DNN 4.9.5 in all instances.

Although I can get around the issue ultimately by deleting the site and recreating it (mostly I am using our own custom modules, so there aren't many pages to any one site) I obviously don't want to be doing this all the time, especially as we are now offering hosted solutions to our customers and therefore will need to regularly move sites from a Staging server to a Production server.

Generally what I have been doing is simply copying the folder contents (web.config and all), and maintaining the folder structure, from old XP machine to new Win7 machine. Other changes involve going from old IIS version (6 maybe ... can't remember .. whatever is on XP) to 7.5 (standard Win7).

The DBs are all local also, and these are being shifted from SQL2005 to SQL2008. Backups of the DNN database were taken, copied across, and restored on SQL2008.

Once IIS is configured, the sites themselves load fine.

When trying to login as Host though, I get no errors, but it appears as though I have not logged in and I am just left on the Login page. As in, the Control Panel doesn't appear, and there is no way for me to edit the pages or anything like that.

I have double checked the machine key and that all seems fine (ie. same as what is used on XP). Because I had to rebuild the first site, I ended up with a new machine key and have tried using that on subsequent moved sites (in conjunction with copying the password out of the aspnet_Membership table) but it has made no difference. Basically once I enter in the user name and password and press login, I am left on the Login page, with no error but with also no means to control the CMS

Anyone have any suggestions or advice?

Thanks Joseph

email I generally don't have working as I now no longer have a local SMTP server (since the machine swap) and the network is too secure or not set up in a way that allows me to access our Exchange box easily. I could try it though, if I can convince our Network Admin as to it's worth

I can go through the process of registering a new user and everything appears to be OK, but at the end I am not logged in as that user, nor can I then login (so any new user ends up in the same scenario I get with Host). I can see that the new record gets created though

The redirect ... is that a tick box option or something? I don't recall setting anything like that up (although, the sites were originally built 12 months ago or more), but would it be done via Admin > Site Settings or something? (or do you know which SQL table it would be controlled in?)

But you know EVERYTHING DNN!

No problem, I'm likely to be moving another site next week so I'll make sure I slow down and note everything, including security levels on the DB and so on. I can't help but think I resolved this on the first web site I moved by doing "something" on the DNN DB ...

Going back to the start of this post, are there any gaps that stand out in my move process?

If only I could remember what I did ... I can't even say with certainty that it was something to the DB that I did, as opposed to some other environmental "thing"