ASP.NET Forms Authentication failed for the request. Reason: The ticket supplied has expired

Question

I am getting this error many times in the event log and users are logged out.

Event code: 4005
Event message: Forms authentication failed for t

Answer 1

Sounds like an error you would get when your forms authentication ticket has expired. What is the timeout period for your ticket? Is it set to sliding or absolute expiration?

I believe the default for the timeout is 20 minutes with sliding expiration so if a user gets authenticated and at some point doesn't hit your site for 20 minutes their ticket would be expired. If it is set to absolute expiration it will expire X number of minutes after it was issued where X is your timeout setting.

You can set the timeout and expiration policy (e.g. sliding, absolute) in your web/machine.config under /configuration/system.web/authentication/forms