SharePoint 2010 Login issue only using IE (Internet Explorer) on an FBA enabled Site
Recently I bought a new laptop (OS: Windows 7 Professional). Using IE9 I opened up one of our SharePoint 2010 sites and tried to login and it just refreshed the login page with no error messages displayed. Using IE9 on my old laptop had never caused this issue.
I searched a lot on the interwebs to see if other people had encountered this issue and I found a lot of people in a similar situation but all the suggestions I found to solve this issue a) did not work for me, b) were unacceptable in any case. They included suggestions like adding the site as a trusted site and then making x,y and z changes to your browser settings.
One of our SharePoint 2010 site is a public facing site where people register and can gain access to the site. Imagine telling those 1000′s of users you need to make x,y,z changes to your browser settings in order to gain access to our site.
What I noticed was that I was having this issue when I clicked on the “remember me” checkbox on the login page (selecting this option issues a persistent cookie). If I did not check this option then I was able to login without any problems.
To cut a long story short, by a complete freak accident, I was able to fix this issue by making a small change in the web.config of the Web Application. If your site uses Claims Based Authentication you will see the following section in your web.config file:
<microsoft.identityModel>
<service saveBootstrapTokens="true">
<audienceUris />
<issuerNameRegistry type="Microsoft.SharePoint.IdentityModel.SPPassiveIssuerNameRegistry, Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" />
<securityTokenHandlers>
<clear />
<add type="Microsoft.IdentityModel.Tokens.X509SecurityTokenHandler, Microsoft.IdentityModel, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" />
<add type="Microsoft.SharePoint.IdentityModel.SPSaml11SecurityTokenHandler, Microsoft.SharePoint.IdentityModel, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c">
<samlSecurityTokenRequirement>
<nameClaimType value="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/2009/08/claims/userid" />
</samlSecurityTokenRequirement>
</add>
<add type="Microsoft.SharePoint.IdentityModel.SPTokenCache, Microsoft.SharePoint.IdentityModel, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" />
</securityTokenHandlers>
<federatedAuthentication>
<wsFederation passiveRedirectEnabled="false" issuer="https://none" realm="https://none" />
<cookieHandler mode="Custom" path="/" >
<customCookieHandler type="Microsoft.SharePoint.IdentityModel.SPChunkedCookieHandler, Microsoft.SharePoint.IdentityModel, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" />
</cookieHandler>
</federatedAuthentication>
</service>
</microsoft.identityModel>
I made the following change (persistentSessionLifetime=”60″):
<cookieHandler mode="Custom" path="/" persistentSessionLifetime="60">
I am not sure why but this fixed the issue for me.
Hope this helps someone else.
