Basic Session/ Login Issue in ASP pages on shared server

[DanWeaver]

Hi,

I am going mad with this.
I seem to have some kind of session problem. Login SEEMS to work (and
login event is recorded sucessfuly in DB (MSSQL on shared server)) but
asp pages behave as
if a user isnt logged in ie not showing user name/ logged in views
etc. As behavior is different on this shared server to my local
development environment (VS 2008/ Web Publisher) Im not sure how to
troubleshoot the problem.

I have set up the scenario at www.joglab.com

New user (Choose New 'un) seems to work ok- it writes to the database:
user:
newuser142205

pass
newuser142205*

... when this user logs in it continues to the default page- which is
the correct continuation behaviour.
Butthat page indicates that the user is not logged in- not showing
their user name and showing status as 'login'

I am using:

<remove name="LocalSqlServer"/>
<add name="LocalSqlServer" connectionString="Data
Source=HYDROGEN;Initial Catalog=thedb;Integrated Security=false;User
Id=blahuser;Password=blahdeblah;"
providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />
</connectionStrings>

in web.config

If I set Integrated Security=false on logging in I get:

Login failed for user ''. The user is not associated with a trusted
SQL Server connection

I have been following the very good instructions here:
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2006/12/22/recipe-deploying-a-sql-database-to-a-remote-hosting-environment-part-1.aspx
for getting my page onto a shared server. It ALMOST works.
Any fix advice massively appreciated.

ps- I cant seem to find an easy way of disabling the requirement for a
non-alphanumeric character in a password - is it not a property of the
login control in VS?