I have an application that requires Windows authentication with fallback to Forms authentication. I built it in this way: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms972958.aspx and everything works fine.
So basically I create forms authentication cookie for a domain based on the outcome of Windows authentication. The cookie is valid as long as the browser stays open. I do not have problems with that in Firefox or Chrome, not even IE8 on Windows XP machines. Unfortunately all Windows7 machines with IE8 experience the same problem: a login prompt shows up when you try to refresh the page after around 30minutes of inactivity. Even if I provide valid Windows credentials I still cannot log in to the application. Nothing helps, but closing the browser and starting it again. Then I am again logged in automatically and it will be fine as long as I stay active. After 30 minutes of inactivity – again log in prompt. After some research I found out that if I delete the auth cookie using developer tools (F12) and then refresh, I get automatically logged in without the prompt (just what you would expect from Windows authentication).
Does anyone of you have an idea what can go wrong and how can I get it to work correctly on Windows7 machines? Or maybe ideas on where to look? Is it IIS problem (I use IIS6 on Windows 2003 Server), client problem? What makes Win7 IE8 so special that it fails?
I don’t know why it expires, but I managed to get rid of the problem. Somehow on IE8 on Win7 it cannot continue, because it tries to auth, but the old auth cookie is supplied. If I clean the cookies on the request and then forward to the login page, it works. It’s not a solution to the problem, but at least the user gets re-authenticated…