Thanks graham, that was very helpful.  I kept wondering why the aspnetdb would have two applicationName's, one for "/" and one for "MyApplicationName" in the aspnet_application table.  I also noticed that when I created a user, two users would be created, one for each ApplicationName.  I suspected that this was the problem as sometimes the login control would work but other times it wouldn't, but couldn't figure out how to change it. Just to clarify, if I wanted all the users to be added to the "/" ApplicationName, I would add <applicationName="/"> to the membership and role sections of the web.config. After that, all users will be added to root. Is this correct?  I didn't have this line in the web.config providers section which I believe was causing the aspnet_application table to have two entries instead of one. Thanks again for shedding  so much need light on the problem. I'm going to give it  a shot right now.