I have modified the starter site to suit my needs.  When I run it on the configuration machine by hitting the play button, everything functions as expected.  When I move this to the web server, and access the site from the web, everything looks ok at first.  When I try to log in I get a message that I could not log in.  So I try to create a new account, I get the error page.  I think there is a problem with the connection to the DB for membership.  One thing that is confussing me is if I click the lost password, and I give my user name, it ask me the security question that I have setup, which tells me there is a connection to the DB.  I am using SQLExpress 2008, IIS 5.1.  The configuration settings in the site are as they were in the download, I have just added users.

 Any help will be appreciated.

 Hello Beginner,

 try out with website administrator tool inside visual studio, Here you will be listed with the users present inside portal. Its a basic site administration tool from visual studio.

Or i can think of the user which you have created is not active. you can try to jump inside database and try to enable the user manuall.

Thanks for your comment, the user was active, problem was with how I created the database in a file system, and it made it read only when on the web.  I recreated the database using an IIS location, and it fixed the problem.