Site with Windows authentication - sometimes gives password prompt

Question

Hi there,

I have a local site (IIS6, although similar issue with a totally different site using IIS5.1) which uses integrated windows authentication, from what I can tell - using IE7 if a user enters the URL into the address bar, everything works OK and the user is logged in automatically. However, if the user clicks on a hyperlink within an e-mail (using Outlook), the site opens but the user gets a login prompt - when details are entered everything then works fine.

Can anyone explain why this is the case? I should say it's actually very temperamental, sometimes the above occurs, sometimes it doesn't... any help is appreciated.

cheers!

Answer 1

Are the urls of the two cases identical? If there is a . in the url, IE will not attempt to pass the user credentials to the site, and will therefore not automatically log you in.

Example: http://mysite/page.aspx is different from http://mysite.domain.local/page.aspx, even though they might point to the same server.

If Outlook is launching using the domain.local, you will get the behaviour you describe.