First off, let me thank you all for your time and effort to make this awesome software available for us. I've been using E-Blah for over 6 years now and never had any problems that could not be fixed... well until now.
A certain member has not been able to log in to her account since last week. She had been an active member since the day #1 and never had this problem. It really happened all of a sudden. We've tried everything we could think of with no luck. Her OS is Win7 and her main browser is IE9 and she's cleaned cache, cookies, history, changed the security level, made sure cookies and JavaScript were both allowed. I even asked the hosting company where my forum is located to add her to the "allow list" just in case her IP address was accidentally banned. She used Google Chrome to see if things could improve but it didn't work either. She has security software called Kaspersky on her PC so I told her to temporarily disable the entire software but no luck. Now I've completely run out of suggestions.

I know it's not E-Blah or her profile file. First, she could log in to her account from her phone. Second, I and another moderator tried to log in to the forum with her account and we both made it. Actually from what I saw in the "log in/off" log, it looks like she was in fact successfully logged in every time she tried. Her username along with her IP address were documented in the log. It's just that her browser or PC won't recognize it.

This is what's happening. Our forum is double-password protected. First, a pop-up window shows up and everyone has to enter the global ID and password. I use ".htaccess" to make this happen. Once members go through this, then they will be brought to the log-in page where it says "You don't have the right credentials to view the forum..." If she intentionally enters a wrong password, it will say it's invalid. But if she enters the correct one, it will just refresh the same page saying she doesn't have the right credentials. And if she tries to register a new account, the same thing will happen and she can't get out of the "You don't have the right credentials" page.

I have not enabled "session login" because we've never had this kind of problems before and as far as I know, there is no guarantee that the "session login" works for every member, right? And although I know I have to have something called "CGI::Session module" in the same directory where the cgi file is located on the server in order for the "session login" to work, I am not quite sure where I can get this module. I've seen someone from this forum uploading it for other people to download from time to time but the posts were all old and I don't know if this module has a newer version etc. Our forum version is 10.05.

Please can anyone help me with this? Does anyone have any suggestions that we could try out? Or should I just enable the "session login"? If so, where can I get the latest module? Any help would be highly appreciated. Like I said, we've completely run out of options. If our forum URL is required, please let me know who I should PM it to. I will PM the right person the URL along with the global log-in information.

Thank you for your time.

Nowheregirl

Hmm... it wasn't clear... can she access the site, period from her PC or can she not reach it at all? Have you tried disabling the secondary .htaccess login to see if that could be the issue?

If none of that resolves it, feel free to email me (justin@eblah.com) more info.

Sorry I wasn't clear enough. Yes she can access the forum. She can go through the .htaccess login just fine. After this .htaccess login, she would be brought to the E-Blah login page and that's where she has trouble. As she is logged out of the forum, she will be told that she doesn't have the right credentials to view the board so she would try to log in. Then if she enters the correct account info or tries to register a new account, it will refreshes the same page and she will be told that she doesn't have the credentials. If she enters the wrong info, it will say it's invalid.

I said in my first post that I could see her username along with her IP address in the "log in/off" log. It's documented every time she attempted to log in. But when I asked her what the message on the top said when she entered the correct info and the same page showed up, she said it said "welcome guest". Whatever she does, it won't say anything but "welcome guest".

If you need to actually see our forum, please let me know. I will email you the info.

Thank you so much for your time. It means a lot to us.


Nowheregirl

Do you know what browser she's using?

She mainly uses IE9 on a Win7 PC and has cleared cache & cookies, changed the settings to allow cookies & JavaScript and the security level to "medium" from "medium-high (default)", added our forum's URL to the "trusted sites" list but none worked. Even when she tried with Google Chrome, there was no improvement at all.

Hmmm, Kaspersky safe browsing thing may be doing it. I manage Kasperksy on computers at work, and they install a local proxy for it, so all new browsers that are installed would be going through that and would all have the same problem.

Try changing your redirect settings in Admin/Settings and see if that helps. Try all three different settings, I'm fairly confident that'll fix it.

Thank you Justin. But before I change the redirect settings, will you kindly tell me what's the difference between those 3 types? Can this affect all the other members who have no problem logging in to the forum? If it can, then I will have to tell them what's going on and why I'm doing this and not to panic if they are kick out. Otherwise I will be flooded with tons of PMs telling me they can't log in etc.

It won't affect anyone.

Thank you Justin. I've changed the settings from "Location type (recommended)" to "Redirect (no html)" and am waiting for this certain person to give it a try. If it doesn't work, I will change it to the 3rd one "HTML redirect".

Let me know. We actually use the last one here, as well.

Justin, I really hate to say this but it didn't really work and we don't have real improvement. One tiny improvement is that she was able to create a new account when it was set to "Redirect (no html)" although she failed to log in to her old account. (Though her username along with her IP address were documented in the "log in/off log.) We have not known if this new account works as I have just validated it and she is not expected to be awake now as we live in the different time zones. I will know if this works in the next 12 hours or so and will let you know as soon as I hear back from her.

If it fails, can I bring her to here? I just thought that it might be better if you could directly ask her questions so that you might come up with more suggestions. Of course I will be here too and do whatever I can to fix this.

Yes, but you may want to email me. During the week I'll forget the forum, sadly.

OK I will email you Justin. Thank you so much for offering help!