Where does IE store the ASP.NET_SessionId cookie?

Question

I am a bit baffled here; using IE7, ASP.NET 2.0 and Cassini (the VS built-in web server; although the same thing seems to be true for "real" applications deployed in IIS) I am looking for the session-id-cookie.

My test page shows a session id (by printing out Session.SessionId) and Response.Cookies.Keys contains ASP.NET_SessionId. So far so good.

But I cannot find the cookie in IEs cookie-store! Nor does "remove all cookies" reset the session (as it does in FF)... So where - I am tempted to write that four letter word - does IE store that bloody cookie? Or am I missing something? By the way there is no hidden field with a session id either, as far as I can see.

If I check in FF there is a cookie called ASP.NET_SessionId as I would expect. And as mentioned above deleting that cookie does start a new session; as I would expect.

Can anybody imagine what is happening here?

Answer 1

The ASP.NET session cookie is non-persistent, so it doesn't get saved to your hard-drive. It gets transmitted back and forth while you're using the application, but it gets discarded when you close the broswer.

From MSDN:

Note

When you run this code, you might see a cookie named ASP.NET_SessionId. That is a cookie that ASP.NET uses to store a unique identifier for your session. The session cookie is not persisted on your hard disk. For more about session cookies, see the "Cookies and Session State" later in this topic.