Continually being dumped to the log in screen

[HerbieJ]

Hi folks,

I need some help with a problem I am having now that I have upgraded from 1.3.8. to 1.3.9f.

There were a few hiccups along the way, but I managed to work them out and successfully managed to complete the upgrade, re-introducing my old database and then applying the patch, or at least so I thought, because now when I try to access anything in my admin area via any of the menus or links, I get dumped out to the log in screen again. I can do that all day, I log in try to click a menu item and get dumped just to log in again and repeat the whole process. Any ideas as to what that is and how I can cure it?

I have spent the best part of last night and today looking to find an answer and I haven't found it. Can anyone help me?

Thanks in advance...

[kobra]

Did you follow the upgrade tutorial and install 1.3.9 first with it's own DB?
Then import the current DB to it?

Then merge your template customizations into this - -noting any files that may have a new version?

[HerbieJ]

Thanks for your reply Kobra.

No, I didn't do it quite that way. I was hacked, on several occasions over the past few months, the last one seriously. I couldn't get into my admin area, and when I finally did with help from my hosting support team, I found that fictitious customers had been added, also several new admins and my email in my payment modules had been changed to redirect funds.

I was advised to take the site offline and do a complete fresh install and try to restore my DB to it. i did that by installing 1.3..9f. Then I manually dropped all the tables in the new DB and imported the old one. I followed the instructions for upgrading the DB to remove the notice I was getting after doing that, which was something about the DB needing a patch. Everything seemed to go well, but then when I tried to start working on the nitty gritty in the admin area, I found I was stuck in a cycle that loads the admin log in screen repeatedly.

This is the worst time for this to be happening, and I don't want to restore my old store for obvious reasons, but the longer the site is down the more I'm losing out. I'm sure it's something simple but I'm just not up to the task of finding what that is...

[kobra]

I was advised to take the site offline and do a complete fresh install

After that step were you able to access the admin?

It may be that your DB was also hacked???

[HerbieJ]

Hell of a question - I have no clue to be honest with you.
I kinda did things on a roll.

I did a clean install and took a look at the site which displayed the default page with everything I expected to see, after importing the old database, I loaded up the site again and saw that my old settings were present apart from no images and no logo etc, then I upgraded the DB and looked again. It loaded fine, I even uploaded my images, and again it was looking very promising to me and figured I was almost across the finishing line. Each time I was able log into my admin area, but I didn't click on anything as I was not about to change any configurations until I had updated everything.

[kobra]

I did a clean install and took a look at the site which displayed the default page with everything I expected to see

I would start over and use 1.3.9h instead

Check the admin for functionality

If you have your old DB uncompressed, open copy of it and remove the entries for the "admin" table - save

Backup your new install DB

Import the edited old DB sql

Check the admin side of this and see if there are any issues

If there are, restore the backup you made earlier of the deffault new install as there is some other thing wrong besides the admin table

Basically, check at each step so that you know what introduces any malfunction

[HerbieJ]

Ok, will try that - wish me luck..!!
Thanks Kobra..

[HerbieJ]

Well, I'm definitely not having a good time here!!!
Although I have got rid of the DB needs patching error message, no matter what I do, I can't get things to work once I have updated it. I keep getting dumped back out to the log in screen. Surely there has to be a way around this error message or some way to fix it without all this maddening crap. I've tried this 16 times already now, and that's just today, and getting the same result.

I'm so close to getting things to a point where I can start getting my store back together but for this incredibly annoying obstacle - please, someone help me before I kill my computer!!!!!

[kobra]

I keep getting dumped back out to the log in screen.

Did you follow the process I outlined?

At what point do you see the loop in the admin?

[HerbieJ]

Yes, I did as you suggested, and I'm in the middle of my 17th try now.
As usual, everything is fine until I run zc_install. My old DB is imported nicely and I have logged into the admin area and navigated around to make sure things are ok. But once I run zc_install to update the DB, when I log into admin, it looks fine until I click on something. At which point I get dumped out to the login screen.