Losing Sessions.. been searching for answer for days!!

[Dugy]

I have been scanning loads of techie websites, microsoft knowledge base, and tek-tips in search for the answer to this problem, but to no avail. Sessions variables are getting bad press, but unfortunately a re-write of this complete application to use client-side cookies, or storing variables in a database is out of the question.

Basically, each page of this web application is generating a new session. In all cases cookies are turned on, although the problem can be created by turning them off, but as everybody has it turned on this doesnt really help. It only affects about 5% of the users, otherwise it works fine.

Everybody is running NT4sp6, and it works consistently with IE4, but some people constantly fail and other people constantly work with IE5.5SP2. The problem is consistent with users, in that if you have the problem it will always fail, regardless of which workstation you log in on. Anti Virus doesn't have an affect on the results either.

Any helpful pointers would be greatfully appreciated.

Dougie

 

[codestorm]

The 'certain users anywhere' sounds odd, but I would have
initially looked at:
1. Specific pages with <%@ enablesessionstate=false%> at the top, or if IIS is set to session state disabled.
2. Maybe certain generic 'security levels' in IE result in either of the cookie types being disabled (though only session/memory cookies would be the issue). Dunno your network/system setup, but I'd assume a domain could specify IE security level settings based on which group(s) each user belongs to. <insert witticism here>
codestorm

 

[Dugy]

codestorm,

Thanks for your reply. Have investigated both suggestions but have still not found the answer.

<%@enablesessionstate=false%> is never used in the pages, I even tried <%@enablesessionstate=true%> to no avail.

We do use policies in our company for limiting user access to the desktop, but not to affect IE settings. All the users affected are techical staff without this limitation.

The 'certain users anywhere' is the bizarre thing, it only affects a small number of users, regardless of what machine they use. Therefore I think it may be registry settings, probably within HKEY_CURRENT_USER, but I dont know which settings affect cookies, hopefully it will be obvious.

Any help here appreciated.

Thanks

Dougie

 

[Dugy]

Aha!!

Have created a couple of very simple asp pages. One which writes a value to a cookie, and the other reads the cookie and displays the value.

On my system, which does not experience the above problem, it works fine. On the other systems it fails. Install the security patch for IE from Microsoft on my system, and the test-cookie pages fail. Restore back to IE4 then reinstall IE5.5SP2 and its fine again.

Unfortunately the majority of failing machines dont have the security patch.

Dont you just love it!!!