Hi, I've been having problems with installing skins on 5.1.1, hence saw the critical update for 5.1.2, which I did (thinking this may fix the problem) My problem now is - with this upgrade to 5.1.2. I can't log in. My admin and host login does not work - It's not that I have forgotten or changed it (i'm sure)... don't know why this has happened. Any chance I can find out what the password is? maybe this via the files on the server? I can still access my site via ftp. Please help. Thank you!

How did you upgrade? - do you have a backup of your original files?

You need to check the web.config file in your live site with the backup web.config file.

This usually happens when certain parts of the web.config code are not copied across, you need to check these lines and compare them with your original web.config file:

< add key="InstallationDate" value="8/10/2009" / >


< machineKey validationKey="A9B285ED4CB6F5C0ED776E781F6E74CC36440885" decryptionKey="B95A5D5AB71541E5BC7789A283A27D01D7C117FD4F9A01DB" decryption="3DES" validation="SHA1" / >

If they are different (all installations have unique numbers for these to encrypt the passwords) - you will need to copy across the original lines from the backup web.config to the new live web.config

Hope this helps,
   

I'm having a similar problem. 

I want to start playing around with my 'Test' install on DNN 5.5.1. I'm running it on localhost ('localhost\dnn_551_test') but the Administrator and Host passwords I wrote down for the site when installing DNN don't work (yeah I know - doh!).

Is there any way I can find out what these are?  Could it be because the ones I have written down are the same as for my 'localhost\dnn_551_tutorial' installation (which works fine)?  I noted Lee's reply above about uniqueness when talking about copying machine keys.

Any advice appreciated please.  Sorry, I'm a newbie so not fully au fait with the setup/install side of things yet.

Cheers

Tim

Since you mention the MachineKey, did you change them?  Changing the machine keys will cause all passwords to quit working as the MachineKey is used to encrypt and decrypt passwords.

If you have done something like this and can't reset the MachineKey because you don't know what it is, you can work around this situation if your site is set up to allow registration.

Here are the steps:

• Register a new user and write down the password.
• Use MS SQL Server Management Studio or the Express version to open your database and look at the table named aspnet_Membership
• Find the row in the table that corresponds to the newly registered user and locate Password and PasswordSalt columns.
• Copy the new user's Password and PasswordSalt values to the same locations in the row for the Host and Admin users.
• Save the modified table.

Now, you should be able to login as Host or Admin, but using the password of the new user. Once logged in, you can change the passwords to their desired values.

Hi Joe

Thanks for your reply.

No I didn't overwrite the machine keys as I didn't want to mess up 'dnn_551_tutorial' which is working fine. I follow what you say, but given the machinekeys are untouched, is there any other way of finding what the login details are?

Also I'm a bit confused in SQL, as I only have the dnn_551_test database listed (so how is it that my 'tutorial' site opens?). Surely if I copy the Password and PasswordSalt values into the Host and Admin users, it will only relate to the 'test' database? (presumably the first two rows returned are Host and Admin? I only have 3 - the last one is the user I've just registered)

I have all the DNN files in subfolders called 'test' and 'tutorial' in the C:\DotNetNukeSites folder. Does that count as 2 DNN installations?

Sorry if I'm sounding thick!

Tim

It seems as if your other site is using the database that is shipped with DotNetNuke.  That always confuses me, too!

I think that the right approach is to "attach" that database using the SQL Server Management Studio tools so that you can see it and manipulate it using that tool.

I never go that route and always create a new database when setting up a new DotNetNuke installation.  I also give the database a name that goes with the installation, as that minimizes the chances that I'll make a mistake.

If you are seeing your new user in the dnn_551_test database, that is the one that you are using.  You could make the new user's password the same as what you think it should be for host or admin.  Then you can look to see if the encrypted password and salt are the same.

One other thing that you could do is change the password format in the web.config file to "plain text" and you can then enter plain text passwords in your test database.  Then it will be easy to check.

--------
As you probably have figured out, DotNetNuke stores encrypted passwords as a security technique.  Combined with the salt and the machineKey, it's possible to decrypt the passwords.  That is how the password recovery feature works.

There is also an option for hashed passwords that are absolutely unrecoverable.  The way to change those is as a host or admin, or using the brute force approach that I described.

Thanks again Joe. I actually ended up looking again at Lee's video 5 on installing DNN to Windows 7 - and that included manually setting up a db in SQL - and everything's now working ok

Cheers

Tim