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Hello,
I am currently in the process of changing the user running the application pool for my IIS .NET 6 website. I am switching it from a domain user to another domain user with identical rights and group memberships.
Although my website appears to be functioning correctly, I have noticed that it occasionally throws errors such as: "An exception occurred while processing the key element" and "Error unprotecting the session cookie." These errors specifically seem to occur when returning visitors access the website, but not when new visitors access it. Additionally, the user does not seem to experience any issues even though the errors are being thrown.
I suspect that this issue may be related to changing the identity of the application pool, but I am unsure of the specific cause. Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions as to what might be causing these errors?
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Are the permissions of the two domain users the same? It is difficult to reproduce your problem based on this error, do you have any other error messages? you can check the event viewer or console in the broswer.
So, I assume you saw those errors recorded in Windows event log? What are the complete log entries (which usually contains other data such as call stacks)? They are important for others to review before suggesting what can be the root causes and solutions. You can open a support case via https://support.microsoft.com to share such logs (as they might contain confidential information you don't want to share publicly.
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the data protection folder used to store keys probably does not allow access to the new account:
[https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/security/data-protection/configuration/overview?view=aspnetcore-7.0