I am not a programmer, but server admin. Was troubleshooting slow ssl authentication using AD Membership Provider on a .NET v2.0.50727 site that I support. Noticed web server sits for 14 seconds after the ssl handshake before it talks to my domain controller. Copied code to two other web servers and could not duplicate the slowness issue, so I went back to looking at configurations that I had changed over the last few months on the specific server. I recalled modifiying the machineKey permissions a long time ago, so I was looking at that and noticed network service did not have permissions so I added it. Did not take any permissions away. Now the authenticated part of my web site fails. At first I got unable to contact ldap server (which was up and functional). Then I recyled the application pool and now I get Configuration Error. Server cannot handle directory requests... and the web.config line highlighted is <membership configProtectionProvider="DataProtectionConfigurationProvider"> I did not touch anything in web.config. Authentication worked (although very slow)before I touched the machineKeys. What can I do? Do I re encrypt with aspnet_regiis?? My sql connections work fine, only AD authentication broke. Thanks
