Unable to log in to manager / last login 1970?

Hi,

I've passed login details to a client of mine and they're unable to log in to the manager. Apparently they get a 'too many failed logins' message and are blocked. However, weirdly, I can log in even with their details from my machine. When I look at the last logins etc, they're in fact not blocked, nor have they apparently tried to log in since 1st Jan 1970.... Very strange. I don't know if the two issues are linked.

Is anyone able to give an insight as to what's going on here? I hope I've provided enough info. The user is definitely using the right login credentials but this issue pops up every time... I'm guessing it's a server setting or something, but that doesn't explain why I can log in from my machine and they can't from theirs.

Going slightly crazy.

Thanks in advance,

Matt

Make sure your browser cookies and cache are cleared and try it with the same credentials. Case matters. If they are getting the "blocked" message, that means they tried three times and had the wrong credentials. They'll get unblocked automatically after an hour.

The 1970 date indicates an invalid or 0 value for the timestamp of their last login; Jan 1 1970 0:0:0 (or Dec 31 1969 24:0:0) is considered the beginning of the "unix epoch", and all timestamps are a count of the seconds since then. Invalid timestamps are automatically considered 0.

Hi sottwell - thanks for the response.

This issue has been going on for a few days - they have tried to log in (with the correct cases in both username and pass) many times but even after an hour or so, they get the blocked message straight away. It's not something I've come across before.

Is there any reason for the timestamp on their last logins to be invalid, or any way that I can con it into thinking the last login was recently? These issues seem to have started together, so I'm hoping that fixing one will fix the other.

You can try to create a new user, and see if they can log in using that. The only other thing that I can think of is that they have some kind of firewall or blocking software on their machine. What browser, and what version, are they using?

Tried with IE, FF and Chrome (all up to date) on Windows 8 with no luck. However on my iMac, FF and Chrome work fine... They've tried on their IT company's machines at a different location too with no luck.

I'll try the new user - that seems like a very sensible suggestion that I really should have thought about

Thanks again for your time

If they're on company machines, the entire company network may have some kind of firewall or blocking configuration. I have a Mac, but I also have an Android phone and an Android pad, as well as Parallels with Windows 7 and 8 on my Mac, so if you like, I can test a temporary login on several different platforms. But I really suspect some kind of firewall or blocking on their end. The Manager login and interface relies heavily on Javascript and AJAX, so it may be something related to that.