IIS Session persists until I close All unrelated IE windows?!

My popup has its own session.id and won't release until ALL windows close

[broniusm]

I have a popup help system that, when spawned, receives its own session.id unique from the parent window. Further, it won't release until ALL browser windows close whether I'm in the web app or WebmasterWorld (which usu stays open in the bg).

Some factors affecting this might be that the event handler (and help icon image) is assigned to a container document from a scriptlet. This is the icon that spawns the new window. Also, the page references the opener window to get the context from which it was called.

All my other spawns (jscript popups or target="x") maintain the same Session.Id.

We're running IIS 5.0 and all client browsers are IE5.5+

Ideas?

[DaveAtIFG]

Caution: The following is purely GUESSWORK based on some observations...

I regularly browse with Opera, it relies on Sun's Virtual Machine to handle Java. Sun's VM adds an icon to my task bar when active and often the only way to remove the icon is to close all browser windows.

My first guess is that the only way to shut down a VM once started, is to close all browser windows. Another possibility is that the Java program itself may not be shutting down properly...

Does anyone have any REAL answers? :)

[broniusm]

Caution: The following is purely GUESSWORK based on some observations...

There is no Java involved. The thing that's really odd about it is that this happened right after we changed our server model from one to two machines (web front/db back). Nothing else in the system has been affected like this. The only thing separating this from other pages I have like it is that this is called as a scriptlet.

The real problem I'm experiencing is that while I can read the user's cookie in this new session, new window, I'm unable to read the user's session variables (eg: password for db).

Is there a way in ASP to intentionally begin a new session?

I'm very confused. And am I starving for responses because I didn't post a New Topic with an update to hit everyone's inbox?

[broniusm]

Here's something I stumbled across that talks about losing session variables in new windows [atgconsulting.com]:

In IE4, select menu pick View Internet Options... checkbox labeled "Browse in a new process"... when you run a window.open call, the window that is opened will not be part of the same session as the window that launched it.

Not exactly the case with my issue, but could be related? I say not exactly because I've window.opening like the A/C is broken and the trash hasn't been taken out for a week, and nowhere else do I lose the session.

[broniusm]

I should reiterate that the same exact files exist both on our production 2-server model and development 1-server. Said operation works fine on the Development side... weird.

[graywolf]

If you have two production servers, I assume you are using some sort of load balancer. Does the load balancer maintain stickyness to one server, if not you will bounce between the two generating session variables on each machine.

[broniusm]

graywolf- no load balancing. Svr1 is strictly web front end, handles all http request, and svr2 is strictly SQL and file server. Svr1 only talks to svr2 when it needs to get some data.
I probably actually threw the discussion off-course by mentioning the swtich to the 2-server model.

Here's more solidified findings from last night:
If I close all IE windows on my client desktop, open only one and browse it to the web app, then click my webapp help icon (which spawns a new window), the session is maintained and I can login to mssql db to get the help info.
If, however, I have my typical Hotmail, Webmasterworld, or Google opened and then open a new IE window from scratch (new process), browse to the web app and click the webapp help icon, the new help window spawns and I get a db login error (because I've jumped ship and started a new IIS Session).

I know I have a new session b/c I response.write(session.id) in both windows for debugging and come up with an incremented value.

(yet, we should keep in mind that it works just fine on development)

[broniusm]

A quirk about the development side of things:
In this popup help system (helpsys), first thing I do is check userid. If the user has permission, I show a helpsys editor button. Well, sometimes on development (where helpsys still "works"), I get a login error but if I click the helpsys editor button, I am redirected (by the session authentication routine) to the webapp login prompt. If I login thru that, then I can call help from that point forward just fine (I presume under the new session).

I am so flustered.