Why Won’t IE Remember My Login Info?

Over on the Microsoft Answers forum, some folks have reported that Internet Explorer doesn’t remember their login details. This is a tricky problem to troubleshoot because there are a number of different problems which get lumped together under this description, and there are a number of different causes for each problem.

Let’s break down the commonly reported problems into two cases:

1. IE’s Web Forms Password Manager doesn’t work.
2. Clicking “Remember me” on websites doesn’t work.

The following two sections will discuss each problem and possible causes and solutions.

Internet Explorer actually has two password managers: the WinINET-provided password manager that remembers HTTP-based authentication credentials entered in the authentication popup window:

...and a browser-specific password manager that remembers passwords typed into HTML forms. For the purposes of this post, we’re only going to be talking about the web forms password manager.

The Forms-Based Password Manager prompts you to save your password when it recognizes that you’ve filled in a login form. The prompt looks like this:

...in IE6,7, and 8. In IE9+, it is replaced by a notification bar at the bottom of the screen that offers the same options:

If you do not see this prompt after submitting a HTML form with a password, there are several

Possible Problems:

1. You have disabled AutoComplete in your browser by checking the “Don’t offer to remember any more passwords” box.
2. The page has explicitly disabled AutoComplete by using the AUTOCOMPLETE=OFF attribute.
3. The HTTPS-delivered page implicitly disabled AutoComplete by returning a HTTP directive forbidding caching. See below
4. Internet Explorer didn’t recognize that the page had a login form.
5. The login form was submitted using JavaScript.
6. You previously said "No" when prompted to save your password for this username on this page.
7. The Administrator disabled AutoComplete in your browser using Group Policy.
8. The login form was created by JavaScript using the createElement API.
9. You didn't type any letters in the Username box (using drag/drop or copy/paste instead)

2013 Update: IE11 Shrinks this list significantly. See below.

You can resolve problem #1 in IE by clicking Tools > Internet Options > Content > Autocomplete > Settings and checking the User names and passwords on forms and Ask me before saving passwords checkboxes.

Issues #2 to #5 are under the control of the website, although most users won't know that (I’ve mentioned this before). There is no way for the user to resolve these problems short of asking the website to update their page.

CORRECTION: Issue #3 is only a problem for AutoComplete of non-login forms. Here's a test page showing that AutoComplete of username and password in login forms works properly even on no-cache HTTPS pages. 2013 Update: IE11 allows even non-logon-form Autocomplete on pages that use Cache-control: no-store.

Case #4 is an interesting one. One possibility is that IE doesn't "see" the login form at all, for instance, because it was written using Adobe Flash, Silverlight, Java, etc). Another possibility is that IE doesn't "recognize" the form as a login form, because it contains more inputs than expected. For instance, Facebook uses a fancy login form that shows the cue text "Password" in a INPUT TYPE=TEXT control (named "Password_Placeholder") until the user puts their cursor in the box. When they do, Facebook uses CSS to hide the password_placeholder box and replaces it with a INPUT TYPE=PASSWORD box into which the user types their password. Unfortunately, while it's hidden by CSS, the placeholder is still a part of the form, and hence it's submitted with the form. Because of this extraneous INPUT TYPE=TEXT control, IE assumes that this isn't a login form and does not offer to save the password. (Using Fiddler, I modified the Facebook homepage to change the placeholder control to INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN and confirmed that this fixed the problem). Update: Facebook fixed this problem in October 2009.

Case #5 is another interesting one. If you submit a form using the JavaScript submit() method, AutoComplete will not offer to save the password. I've built a simple test page which demonstrates this. If you use the standard INPUT TYPE=SUBMIT button, you'll be prompted to save your password. If you use the button which calls the .submit() method, no prompt is shown. To workaround this issue, web developers can call the AutoCompleteSaveForm method.

Case #6 is a tough one. If you previously elected not to save your password for this username for this page , then that “Don’t Store” preference is retained and you will not be prompted to save the password for this username in the future either. There's no "good" workaround for this. Update: There is now a better workaround; see https://blogs.msdn.com/b/ieinternals/archive/2010/04/09/restoring-the-internet-explorer-password-autocomplete-prompt.aspx

You can delete ALL of your passwords using the Tools > Delete Browsing History option, and this will reset all password decisions back to prompt-- but doing this will wipe all of your passwords for all sites. If you're a technical user, there's a geeky way to get the prompt back for a specific page:

• Get RegMon or ProcMon from SysInternals
• Set a filter to watch the registry key containing the word "Storage2" without quotes.
• Visit the page for which autocomplete information should be stored.
• Watch which subkey within the Storage2 key is opened. 
• Delete (or rename) that key to remove any stored passwords or "don't store" decisions. 

Case #7 occurs when your Administrator uses Group Policy to disable the AutoComplete feature. To see the Group Policy settings, click on Start and type gpedit.msc to launch the Group Policy viewer. Browse through to User Configuration, Administrative Templates, Windows Components, Internet Explorer. Check the policies for "Disable Autocomplete for Forms" and "Turn on the auto-complete feature for user names and passwords on forms." Alternatively, close IE, start Process Monitor, and filter for registry reads of keys containing the word FormSuggest.

Case #8 is something I didn't learn about until July of 2011. It turns out that most browsers (IE9, Firefox 5.01, Chrome 13) don't work properly when a login form is created dynamically using the createElement API. Here's a test page. Only Opera works properly with this test page. For what it's worth, if the test page injects a script-created form by injecting markup using innerHTML, it appears to work correctly in IE.

Case #9 is something I didn't learn about until June of 2012. If you copy/paste or drag/drop the text into the username box without ever typing any letters (even if you deleted them later), then you will not be prompted to save the password.

Note: If you see the prompt in IE9+ but it immediately disappears the problem is likely that your login page immediately navigated to a page on a different domain. Many of IE9+'s notification bars, including this one, go away automatically when navigating to a different domain.

If, on the other hand, you do see the Save Password prompt, but the password doesn’t seem to autofill, there are several possibilities:

1. The website’s login page uses paths that contain unique or changing tokens
2. The website's login page deliberately randomizes the name of the form fields
3. Your stored passwords are being cleared between visits

The Forms password manager is designed to recognize when you’re revisiting a login form for which you’ve previously stored a password. When you enter a username for which you’ve stored a password, the password should automatically be filled in the appropriate box.

A key point here is that IE must recognize that this is a form for which you’ve stored a password. IE’s password manager takes into account the URL (specifically the hostname + folder path + filename, not including the query string or fragment) and the name of the form fields. If the website changes these values (for instance, it stores a session identifier as a “virtual” folder in the URL), then IE will not recognize a revisit the login form and will not fill the password. Similarly, if the website changes the names of the HTML input controls, IE will not fill the password. I have encountered several sites which suffer from one or both of these problems.

Lastly, it’s possible that your stored passwords are simply being deleted. IE includes a number of features that allow you to delete your browsing history, including your stored passwords. Make sure that you have the checkbox Delete browsing history on exit checkbox unchecked inside Tools > Internet Options > General . Also, if you use the Delete Browser History command, you should uncheck the Passwords checkbox or you will lose your stored passwords. Notably, the Preserve Favorites Website Data checkbox at the top of this screen will not preserve your form data, including passwords. (Interestingly, it's impossible for the feature to keep form data. Only URL hashes are stored in the registry, so the feature cannot determine whether a piece of stored form data belongs to one of your favorite sites).

Internet Explorer 11 Update

The IE team made significant investments in fixing password autocompletion for IE11. Of the list of "possible problems" above, IE11 resolves #2, #5, #8, and #9 as well as most cases of #4. IE's Password Manager now supports autocompletion for the majority of logon forms.

You might wonder: "Why does IE11 ignore the AUTOCOMPLETE attribute on login forms while continuing to respect the attribute on all other AutoComplete input elements (e.g. address, credit cards, phone #, etc) ?"

The answer is that Password Managers improve real-world security, and the IE team felt it was important to put users in control. Users rely on their password manager to permit them to comfortably use strong passwords. Password managers encourage strong, unique password creation per site, but unique, strong passwords are often difficult to remember and type on touch devices. If the browser doesn't offer to autocomplete a password, the user assumes that the browser is broken. The user will then either use another browser that ignores the attribute, or install a password manager plugin that ignores it. I'm an example of this myself-- until IE11, I used a weak password on the site that publishes my book because I couldn't convince them to remove the AUTOCOMPLETE attribute from their login form. Now, with IE11, that worry is gone and I can use a strong password on that site without a major hassle.

Other users have encountered problems where a website offers a “Remember me” checkbox but that checkbox doesn’t seem to work. There are a number of possible reasons for this:

1. You checked “Remember me” while in IE’s InPrivate browsing mode
2. Your cookie settings restrict the server’s ability to set persistent cookies
3. Your browser zones configuration is incompatible
4. Your browser isn’t patched
5. The website’s security policy requires an occasional login
6. The website’s cookies are being cleared

Problem #1 is simple enough-- “Remember me” features typically require the server to set a persistent HTTP cookie to store your authentication information. When you are browsing in IE8’s InPrivate Browsing mode, all persistent cookies are automatically downgraded to session cookies that expire on browser exit. Also, when the browser starts an InPrivate Browsing session, the cookie jar starts out empty for that session. So, you should not expect “Remember me” to work if you either are in an InPrivate session, or checked the box in such a session.

Problem #2 occurs if you’ve adjusted your cookie settings inside Tools / Internet Options / Privacy. If you’ve changed these settings from the defaults (or if the site is constructed in an unconventional way) the site may not be permitted to save persistent cookies at all. When this is the case, the site will not be able to set persistent cookies and hence the “Remember me” feature will not work.

Problem #3 occurs on Windows Vista and above, when you have configured one subdomain to run outside of Protected Mode (e.g. put it in the Trusted Zone) and another related subdomain to run inside of Protected Mode (e.g. left it in the Internet Zone). This isn’t terribly common, but might occur if you, for instance, put login.live.com in the Trusted Zone but didn’t put mail.live.com in the Trusted Zone. The root cause of this obscure problem is that Protected Mode and non-Protected Mode do not share cookies, and hence a cookie set by a site outside of Protected Mode will not be visible to a site running inside Protected Mode, and vice versa.

In some cases, this can lead to even worse problems. For instance, consider the case where you put www.google.com in the Trusted Zone and visit www.gmail.com . If you then try to log into GMail, you will be redirected endlessly, as the login host redirects you to the application host (since the login page has the cookie and believes you're logged in), and the application bounces you back to the login page (because the application doesn't see your login cookie). Servers can prevent such loops by passing querystring parameters when redirecting so the destination knows not to immediately redirect back in a loop.

Update: I wrote a longer post about problem #3 here.

Problem #4 relates to obscure cookie-related issues in IE7 which were fixed in subsequent patches. Ensure you have the latest updates for your browser using WindowsUpdate.

Problem #5 is that some sites (particularly secure sites) will require that you periodically (e.g. every week or month) re login  to help limit the risk of misuse of your credentials. Sometimes, sites will track which IP address you use to log in, and if your IP address changes (e.g. you move from one network to another with your laptop) your cached login cookies will be considered invalid.

These cases are tricky to troubleshoot because there’s no indication to the client (unless the server explicitly provides an indication) that you sent a legitimate stored cookie but security policy requires periodic re-login. You can usually only determine that this is the problem by using a network monitor (like Fiddler ). Unfortunately, even that form of troubleshooting is difficult because unless you happened to have Fiddler running at the time of the prompt, it’s usually too late (because the login form will often itself wipe your “outdated” cookie).

Problem #6 is the most common problem—the website’s cookies are simply being cleared. As noted above, there are a number of ways that this can happen: you may have IE configured to delete cookies on exit (see the checkbox Delete browsing history on exit checkbox unchecked inside Tools > Internet Options > General) . Or, perhaps you’ve deleted browser history manually using the Delete Browser History command. It’s also possible that your cookies are being cleared by another piece of software, for instance, security or privacy utilities.

If you find yourself encountering a problem with stored passwords, gathering the following information will help troubleshooters:

1. What is the URL of the login page?
2. Is the problem that you don’t see the “Save password” prompt?
3. Or, is the problem that you do see the “Save password” prompt but it doesn’t seem to work?
4. Or, is the problem that a “Remember me” box in the web page doesn’t seem to work?
5. Have you added any sites to the Trusted Zone?
6. Inside the Tools > Internet Options > Privacy screen, is the Default button disabled? If you click the Sites button, is the sites list empty?
7. What addons are listed inside Tools > Manage Add-ons ? Do you have the “Windows Live Sign-in Helper” installed, for instance?
8. Are you running any 3rd-party security or privacy utility software?
9. If the problem is a “forgotten” login stored using “Remember me”—when did you last log into the website? Was that login from the same computer, in the same location?

While troubleshooting login problems can be quite tricky, in most cases problems are resolved by relatively simple configuration changes.

Until next time,

Eric Lawrence

• Anonymous
  September 10, 2009
  Nice write up Eric.  It's very helpful.  I notice you don't talk specifically about Facebook.  I can load up Fiddler to check, but does Facebook explicitly turn off AutoComplete?

• Anonymous
  September 10, 2009
  Installed Fiddler, and Facebook comes back with: HTTP/1.1 200 OK [...] Cache-Control: private, no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0 Pragma: no-cache So is that end of story as far as IE is concerned?  Any way to override this?

• Anonymous
  September 10, 2009
  Interesting post. I have always found Firefox's password remembering feature to be more reliable than IE's. It just seems to be there more often. It is also beneficial to have a prompt that stays while the next page loads, so you can click "remember" once you actually know you typed the correct password :-)

• Anonymous
  September 10, 2009
  @Charles Oppermann: That's the end of the story in terms of IE remembering your password.  You can tell facebook to keep you logged in via cookies, and that works.  not sure of the additional security concerns that raises (in terms of people at the computer, none, because either way they can get to your facebook account just by going to facebook.com.  In terms of what automated tools can do, no idea)

• Anonymous
  September 11, 2009
  @Charles: The lack of prompt on Facebook is actually not related to caching headers. It's an interesting case related to their fancy "cue text" edit boxes. I've updated the text of "Case #4" in the blog post above to explain what's going on. I've also added "Case #5" to add one more scenario which causes this problem. @Matt Sharpe: In most ways, Firefox's password manager is superior to IE's. I believe they've had a number of security problems with their mechanism (which they've patched over the years) but it definitely provides a more consistent and understandable user-experience.

• Anonymous
  September 12, 2009
  "Over on the Microsoft Answers forum, some folks have reported that Internet Explorer doesn’t remember their login details..." Ditto in IE General newsgroup. Don't forget about those users, please. <wink>

• Anonymous
  September 19, 2009
  Great post!! My IE8 does not prompt to save password. The site I am talking about need loginID in a email format. Anyways I still have this problem. Lets say my problem belongs to #2-#4. Then how come Safari and Firefox are able to remember the password? Thanks

• Anonymous
  September 19, 2009
  @Prabhat: I don't know that either Firefox or Safari respects the autocomplete attribute for password management, so problems #2 and #3 may not apply there. What URLs do you see this problem on?

• Anonymous
  October 07, 2009
  Great post.  But there are still other cases: IE8 was providing my email in the list of emails to login but it had associated the wrong password. So, I highlighted my email and hit delete when the pulldown was shown. Now, I can't get IE to remember my email anymore!! Do you know of anyway to get IE to re-enable my email for that website?

• Anonymous
  October 07, 2009
  @Dennis: Deleting a stored username from the dropdown will result in the prompt: "Windows has a password stored for this user name. Do you want to delete the user name and password? [Yes] [No]" If you choose Yes, you can subsequently enter a new user name and password. After doing so, you will be asked whether you would like IE to Remember this Password (unless such prompting is disabled, as described previously).

• Anonymous
  October 08, 2009
  whats does this mean? the entry in temporary internet files forgets where it pointing. [Window Title] C:UsersdannyAppDataRoamingMicrosoftWindowsCookiesdanny@facebook[1].txt [Content] Windows cannot find 'C:UsersdannyAppDataRoamingMicrosoftWindowsCookiesdanny@facebook[1].txt'. Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again. [OK]

• Anonymous
  October 08, 2009
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  October 08, 2009
  and now it has forgotten my password. heres the thing i didnt do much of anything. i had the browser open the whole time. it was remembering the password. and then it forgot.

• Anonymous
  October 08, 2009
  and now it remembers my password again. it seemed to remember after i made a comment. i have two face book cookies. temp internet points to the oldest cookie currently.

• Anonymous
  November 09, 2009
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  November 12, 2009
  It seems that I can not autofill while I access Myspace. It happens that the message promp works with other websites, but it won't on Myspace. I'd like to hear it from you.

• Anonymous
  November 16, 2009
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  November 17, 2009
  Ok The only thing I haven't seen addresed here is how to get the inputbox for autocomplete to come back on. In my case I told it to stop asking me and I've done everything that all the sites tell you to do and it still doesn't work. How about telling us how to fix it so it works again. I'm using Vista and IE8.

• Anonymous
  November 17, 2009
  The only other things left that I haven't done is reset IE8 settings and "from the add/remove programs in control panel" to repair IE8. Would that fix it?

• Anonymous
  November 17, 2009
  WHY do my posts keep disappearing here????

• Anonymous
  November 20, 2009
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  November 23, 2009
  But what if the problem IS with HTTP authentication credentials being lost? This started happening suddenly in the past few days, and is infuriating! I can't find anything on this topic - any pointers?

• Anonymous
  November 23, 2009
  @Rob: Can you provide any additional details? What sites are you having problems with? What auth protocols are being used? Is the machine in question on a domain?

• Anonymous
  November 25, 2009
  I have the same problem on some websides that the IE is not saving my passwords... I checked Eric´s solutions but they dont work for me.. still the problem that my password not being saved. I DONT had that problem under Vista and IE8!!! Since i have Windows7 64bit Version i have this problem......

• Anonymous
  November 26, 2009
  All sites that require http authentication are affected, including several sections of my own websites, as well as subdomains with authentication on external websites. IE seems to remember them for a while, then loses its memory. Nothing fancy - just standard http authentication, set up through htaccess. On my PC end, I'm using IE8 with Vista (no recent changes there, besides the automated updates that come through routinely); I'm on a home network, connected through a router to a cable modem. I do have a different PC that is connected to the router configured as a web server, but I don't think that's related to this problem.

• Anonymous
  November 30, 2009
  @Dave: To get the prompt to come back on, click Tools / Internet Options / Content / AutoComplete Settings, and tick the "usernames and passwords" and "Ask me before saving passwords" boxes.

• Anonymous
  December 08, 2009
  Very detailed answer, but the issue happens to ALL the sites I visit with logins, including Hotmail.  Now why would Hotmail run in a manner that isn't completely compatible with IE8?

• Anonymous
  December 11, 2009
  I am using Vista Home Premium and Internet Explorer 8.  The browser remembers any and all Form-Based passwords, BUT does not allow me to add any new passwords in pop-up dialogue boxes, (such as those used in cPanel, or FrontPage) It has stored the old exisitng passwords, thankfully, BUT it is not allowing me to save any new ones.  Being a web developer this is a real pain. I have reset IE 8, I have read a ton of posts, and still have not found an answer to this dilema. How can I fix IE8 to remember new passwords? *(notice I did not ask your opinion of Firefox or any other browser!) Thank you.

• Anonymous
  December 11, 2009
  @Michael: What does "it is not allowing me to save any new ones" mean specifically?  Do you see the checkbox on the password dialog? Was this machine ever part of a domain network? (Group Policy can be set to forbid saving of HTTP authentication credentials)

• Anonymous
  December 11, 2009
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  December 11, 2009
  @Michael: If you go into the System Control Panel and open the Credential Manager (inside the Accounts group) do you see your stored credentials persisted there?

• Anonymous
  December 11, 2009
  Yes I do see them in there. It would appear that some of them are not storing, and I am at a loss as to where to change the ability to do so. I was able to manually edit one, and it seems to have worked. Is there a way to change the setting?

• Anonymous
  December 11, 2009
  UPDATE: After making an edit to one password manually, I have since been able to save another password through the website.... Will continue to test other sites. Thanks

• Anonymous
  December 13, 2009
  @Eric Lawrence: THANK YOU. I had my SharePoint's site set to low security, but hadn't added the URL to the Sites list. Yeah, that was really obvious.

• Anonymous
  December 14, 2009
  log in info was very interesting and i hope helpful. thank you.

• Anonymous
  December 17, 2009
  I have had this problem as well; very frustrating.  I have discovered however that autocomplete works like a champ if you install windows live toolbar version 03.01.0000.0130.  I don't know if it's a coincidence or not, but it does seem to work for me.  

• Anonymous
  December 20, 2009
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  December 20, 2009
  @Dave: Your page works fine; I login, close the browser, open the browser again, and the cookie stored previously is re-sent properly.

• Anonymous
  December 20, 2009
  I tested a seperate login with another login I have built and that one works.  Why is it just my domain?  Could it be the SSL? Registry? or should I delete IE8 and retry or go back to IE7 dave

• Anonymous
  December 21, 2009
  @Dave: Have you looked at your traffic using Fiddler to see the cookie being set and/or sent?

• Anonymous
  December 21, 2009
  No I just have www.glsbrakes.com/GLS_Login/check_cookie.php to check for cookies after I login and close IE without Logging out.  I feel like it is a blip in IE and what is this counter/ in the temp folder.  Does that have anything to do with cookies? Dave

• Anonymous
  December 21, 2009
  @Dave: Don't try to debug cookie issues by looking at the files on the local filesystem. They don't work the way you would expect them too. You should watch your network traffic to see exactly what is being sent.

• Anonymous
  December 21, 2009
  Interesting, I did download fiddler2, ran my page. I did recieve an error #70 once and #90 once. and for now my login is working on this computer.  Why? I have not clue.. Dave

• Anonymous
  December 21, 2009
  Is this common?  I would like to know what it was I or Fiddler2 did to repair my issue. Dave

• Anonymous
  December 26, 2009
  none of this helped me.. but I should be used to that by now

• Anonymous
  January 11, 2010
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  January 11, 2010
  Mark, the site you link to is using HTTP authentication, which is not really covered in this post, and has nothing to do with Cookies or Autocomplete. You'll need to watch your traffic with a network debugger like Fiddler to see if your credentials are tried and rejected, or if something else is happening.

• Anonymous
  January 11, 2010
  Solution here: http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/InternetExplorer/thread/7a32cfdc-224d-444b-aa58-b4c570d2fa0c

• Anonymous
  January 24, 2010
  I resolved in my case, this issue with lot of research. Hope it may be useful someone. Just I did like this in addition to Auto Complete... Internet Options -- security tab -- Internet--Custom level -- scroll all the way down to ...User Authentication - Logon - Check Automatic logon with current user name and password

• Anonymous
  January 25, 2010
  Is this not anything to do in contrall pannle? Thomas

• Anonymous
  January 27, 2010
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  January 30, 2010
  Never even thought about clearing history as reason for username not being remembered. I did not have this problem w/IE7.

• Anonymous
  February 05, 2010
  Cannot store my password to access my webmail in godaddy.com - https://email.secureserver.net/login.php Windows 7 using IE8 Peter

• Anonymous
  February 06, 2010
  Thanks for deleting a genuine post

• Anonymous
  February 08, 2010
  I am running IE8 with Windows 7 Home Premium and Norton Internet Security 2009.  I can check the User names and passwords on forms and Ask me before saving passwords checkboxes, and it'll stay that way until I shut my computer down.  When I start my computer back up those boxes will be unchecked, why does it keep doing that?

• Anonymous
  February 09, 2010
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  February 09, 2010
  1 more thing i wanted to mention.. the Forms-Based Password Manager DOES pop up on some other sites, it worked on the test page you created.

• Anonymous
  February 10, 2010
  Eric, I have a question about #3, the HTTPS-delivered page implicitly disabled autocomplete by returning a HTTP directive forbidding caching. That describes my situation. However, I have a requirement that autocomplete remains working. Is my solution to go to FireFox or is there a workaround for IE? Thanks in advance.

• Anonymous
  February 11, 2010
  @Dan: Sorry, IE 6,7, and 8 don't offer an option to allow the autocomplete feature to be used when a HTTPS-delivered page was delivered with a "no-cache" directive.

• Anonymous
  February 11, 2010
  I think I've figured out what is triggering my IE8 to lose all of it's cookie/login information. Whenever my system freezes (which seems to happen sporadically on my Win7 x64 machine), and I have to do a manually reboot by holding power to power it off, then turnign back on. When it comes back up the browser has forgotten all cookies, history and saved passwords. I don't know what is causing it to freeze and lock up, but I do know that when it comes back, my IE 8 has lost it's memory.

• Anonymous
  February 11, 2010
  Eric, thank you for replying. Our goal with using the "no-cache" directive was to prevent forms from being submitted more than once. The unexpected consequence was that autocomplete stopped working. We discovered that changing to Response.CacheControl = "must-revalidate, private" allows us to use autocomplete once again and prevents forms from being submitted more than once. Are there any gotchas we should be aware of when using "must-revalidate, private"?

• Anonymous
  February 25, 2010
  But what about this problem: I go to a website and enter my username and password -- no offer to remember the info.  BUT, if I enter a different (incorrect) username and password, it DOES offer to remember. I must have clicked "no" the first time I entered my username on the site.  And now there doesn't seem to be any way to make IE8 ask me again so I can say "yes."  Even deleting all the history doesn't reset this.

• Anonymous
  February 25, 2010
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  March 19, 2010
  I have a website I use with many multiple logins. I have a different login for each client. Unfortunately, when logging in as one of my clients, I accidentally clicked the "No" option when prompted to remember the password. Now I cannot change it so that that client's login autocompletes the password. All the other clients's logins will autocomplete, and a new client's login will be prompted for rememberance, but not for the one which I clicked "No". There are suggestions on the web to backup the Storage2 key in the registry, but this doesn't work, because each data item represents a single website. And so wiping out this one website will wipe over a dozen passwords. Suggestions?

• Anonymous
  April 03, 2010
  Hi Thanks sooooo much for posting this. It helped me alot. Unlike some other pages. Thanks I have fixed the problem. Thanks again.

• Anonymous
  April 06, 2010
  Someone asked what happens when the user later changes their password for a given website. When this happens, a dialog is shown asking if the user wants to update their stored password. However, this dialog is shown only if the user types a new password in over a previously-autocompleted password. If the user had previously elected not to save their old password for this username for this page, then that “Don’t Store” preference is retained and they will not be prompted to save the new password for this username in the future either.  (If you think about it, that sorta makes sense, because the browser didn’t store the old password, and thus has no way to know if what the user typed represents a “new” password). The user’s passwords or “don’t store” decisions are stored inside the registry key "HKCUSoftwareMicrosoftInternet ExplorerIntelliFormsStorage2".  Unfortunately, you’ll find that you cannot easily find the URL for your site in this list—while the URL is used as the key name, like the password list, it is stored in a per-user encrypted format. While there are tools that would allow the current user to decrypt this information, those tools are not produced or recommended by Microsoft.

• Anonymous
  April 06, 2010
  @Lumpy: Since you're clearly a pretty technical user, here's what you do: 1> Get RegMon or ProcMon from SysInternals. Set a filter to watch the registry key containing the word "Storage2" without quotes. 2> Visit the page for which autocomplete information should be stored. Watch which subkey within the Storage2 key is opened. 3> Delete (or rename) that key to remove any stored passwords or "don't store" decisions.

• Anonymous
  April 19, 2010
  When you install Mozilla, during the first run configuration it asks it I want to import favorties and password from IE. I haven't seen it work, but want to know if ther are able to do it! I see that the registry location where the password is stored is encrypted..

• Anonymous
  April 19, 2010
  @Sriranga: No, Mozilla cannot import Forms Autocomplete passwords from IE7 and later. As I mentioned, doing so is not possible due to the hashing.

• Anonymous
  April 20, 2010
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  May 04, 2010
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• Anonymous
  May 07, 2010
  ok i didnt quite understand the  website info....could u email me at georgiadawgsrule7@yahoo.com??? any website i go to never remembers me like facebook...and i get on often so its not the logging in often part...and its not just facebook...myspace...espn...and others

• Anonymous
  May 08, 2010
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  May 08, 2010
  I have a customer that logs into postini. which has the option to remeber the password. It will remeber it for a little while (2-3 Days) and then it will lose the setting. I have several other computers that are remembering it fine. It is just her's that looses the settings. It only started doing this recently, it worked perfectly before. Any assistance with this would be great. Please and Thank You.

• Anonymous
  May 14, 2010
  Is this simply a 32 bit versus a 64 bit problem?

• Anonymous
  May 15, 2010
  @Mark: I'm not sure what you're asking.

• Anonymous
  June 02, 2010
  Mark: The customer has the 32 bit version, but I am only having it on her machine and not any other machine. I have XP, Vista, Win7 (32 and 64) and they all work fine except this one. Eric: I am asking if you know or have heard of this issue and if you have any ideas on how to get the the username and password to remain saved. Be Blessed, KB

• Anonymous
  June 29, 2010
  THANK YOU SO MUCH!! The thoroughness of your answer to this question appears to have (so far, at least - and I suspect completely) fixed my problems in this.   Thanks, again!

• Anonymous
  September 13, 2010
  Hi Eric,       Nice write up. Currently I'm facing different problem. "Remember me" working fine. But if i traverse to one page(This page has ajax call for every 30 seconds), all my cookies except session cookies get deleted. Its happening only in IE8. Its not get deleted in Firefox and IE6. Have you faced this problem? Note: I haven't shared my coding. because it is working in all the browsers except IE8.

• Anonymous
  September 13, 2010
  @Mathan: Are you saying you lose persistent cookies when navigating to this page? And you lose persistent cookies for all sites, or only that one? Are you running the latest Windows Updates?  (Short answer is no: There's no known issue here. Is your URL public?)

• Anonymous
  September 13, 2010
  @EricLaw, Are you saying you lose persistent cookies when navigating to this page? YES And you lose persistent cookies for all sites, or only that one?  Only for my site. But its keeping my session cookies. Are you running the latest Windows Updates?  (Short answer is no: There's no known issue here. Is your URL public?) - Not sure. URL is private.

• Anonymous
  September 28, 2010
  Is there any way to make IE remember a password when the form uses JavaScript .submit?  From your example "case #5" above.

• Anonymous
  October 05, 2010
  I have Windows XP, IE 8, and it won't remember ANY passwords.  There is no 'storage2' in the registry.  These sections all say yes under the 'main' folder in the registry: FormSuggest Passwords FormSuggest PW Ask Use FormSuggest I have all necessary boxes checked in the 'Content' tab, I have cleared all the stored information several times, even tried uninstalling and reinstalling IE8.  Still don't get asked to remember any passwords.   Is there any way to rebuild the registry for IE8 so it does remember passwords?

• Anonymous
  October 05, 2010
  Oh yeah, and IE6 remembers the passwords just fine when I had to uninstall IE8.  

• Anonymous
  April 18, 2011
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  April 18, 2011
  @Jon:  Which boxes are checked inside Tools > Internet Options > Content > AutoComplete Settings?

• Anonymous
  June 18, 2011
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  July 31, 2011
  Having just upgraded to IE9 at my workplace - are now running into this same problem - seemingly with all sites - not just a select few. www.debugtheweb.com/.../passwordautocomplete.asp - Test site never prompted to remember password. I have all of the boxes ticked (except for use windows search and feeds) in the Autocomplete Settings button.

• Anonymous
  July 31, 2011
  @Michael: My first suggestion would be to look into whether the "Don't allow saving passwords" Group Policy is set in your corporate environment.

• Anonymous
  August 01, 2011
  @EricLaw No policy exists that modifies that setting. We have an existing policies that deals with proxy settings in IE - but that's the closest thing.

• Anonymous
  August 01, 2011
  @Michael: And if you watch for regkey reads from a path containing FormSuggest, what do you see?

• Anonymous
  August 01, 2011
  @EricLaw I get the following: regedit.exe 5956 RegQueryValue HKCUSoftwarePoliciesMicrosoftInternet ExplorerControl PanelFormSuggest SUCCESS Type: REG_DWORD, Length: 4, Data: 0 and 10:10:49.5951895 AM regedit.exe 5956 RegQueryValue HKCUSoftwarePoliciesMicrosoftInternet ExplorerControl PanelFormSuggest Passwords SUCCESS Type: REG_DWORD, Length: 4, Data: 0 Changing the value to 1 using regedit fixes the problem - I was prompted for a password on the test site and now the options under the autocomplete section are greyed out (but still ticked)

• Anonymous
  August 01, 2011
  @Michael: Thanks for the update! Did you change both policies to "1" or just the latter?

• Anonymous
  August 01, 2011
  @EricLaw I changed both values to 1 - but found it also works just changed the "FormSuggest Passwords" value. Thanks for your help!

• Anonymous
  November 03, 2011
  Dear Eric, thanks for that helpful write up. What can I do from a developers point of view to face the "IE didn’t recognize that the page had a login form" problem? What is IE looking for to decide that this or that is a login form? We're using ASP.NET and the single form approach and IE doesnt't prompt to save the password. Best regards Jörg

• Anonymous
  November 04, 2011
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  December 15, 2011
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  June 26, 2012
  Have not read the post but i found that when copy + pasting login and password data into the fields i was not prompted to remember the password. When i typed them both in i am prompted. ??!

• Anonymous
  June 27, 2012
  @Gorden: Issue #9 added. It doesn't matter what you do with the password, but you must either type one character in the username field, or use the TAB key to exit it.

• Anonymous
  May 13, 2014
  IE 10 has a new option when you right click you get "open in new tab" and sometimes this opens a new window which is when the session is lost. You can try right clicking and open in new tab around five to six times it will open in new browser window and then session is lost(i.e. you have to login again if u load the same web page). I need a confirmation that this is a browser issue. [EricLaw] The "Open in new tab" option was introduced in IE7, and there are no known-issues that cause the issue you describe. You may want to try disabling all browser add-ons. If you can still reproduce the problem, please email me (using the Contact link) information about the repro steps and, if possible, a Fiddler SAZ file.

• Anonymous
  January 27, 2015
  Hi Eric, first of all i love this post, helped me a lot to troubleshoot, but my problem still exists. I work in a Company where we work in a intranet site and one computer just does not want to save the passwords of a specific user. I checked all things on this page, group policys, cookies, trusted sites etc.. It's WinXP PC with IE8, i reinstalled java and IE itself, wont work. IE does not ask for me to save the password on EVERY site i logon, so gmx.net or live.com and on the intranet. But with an other User on the same PC it's working fine, can you imagine whats the problem? Regards Philipp - Aerono [EricLaw] For the affected user, what is seen inside Tools > Internet Options > Content Tab > AutoComplete Settings?

• Anonymous
  January 28, 2015
  @EricLaw: In the AutoComplete options we have the same options chosen like by my user. And the interesting thing is that when i uninstall IE8 and try it with IE6 it works ! and with Firefox it works also.. It has to be a problem with the User->IE8 Settings but i checked all settings and deleted all coookies/cache.. do you have a Idea how i delete ALL SETTINGS after i uninstall IE8 to fully set it to standard ? [EricLaw] Firefox doesn't share or use IE's settings. You might try using Process Monitor to watch for any Access Denied errors when reading registry keys or the like, but unfortunately without access to the machine, I don't have any other ideas. THANK YOU VERY MUCH for the reply, your really a MVP :)