Let’s explore more about “401 unauthorized access is denied due to invalid credentials” in Plesk. Bobcares, as a part of our Plesk Hosting Support Services, offers solutions to every query that comes our way.

“401 unauthorized access is denied due to invalid credentials” in Plesk

With an authorized login from a Plesk admin/reseller/customer, the user is unable to access a protected web statistics page of a domain. The page continually asks for login information, or the following message appears:

PLESK_INFO: Unauthorized
Access is denied due to invalid credentials. PLESK_INFO: HTTP Error 401.4 – Unauthorized

Also, any of the below error messages appears on the Logs page (Domains > example.com > Logs):

• AH01617: user john_doe
• authentication failure for “/plesk-stat/webstat-ssl”
• Password Mismatch user john_doe not found: /plesk-stat/webstat-ssl/

Here, instead of using FTP user credentials or protected directory users, Plesk admin/reseller/customer login credentials are used. FTP login credentials must be used in order to access restricted web statistics pages.

How To Fix The “401 unauthorized access is denied due to invalid credentials” in Plesk?

Let’s look into some of the possible solutions for the issue.

Method 1

1. Select the website that is producing the 401 error by opening iis.
2. Then open the “Authentication” property under the “IIS” header.
3. Now select the “Windows Authentication” item and click “Providers”.
4. Finally, move NTLM at the top, and BAM that fixes the “401 unauthorized access is denied due to invalid credentials” error.

Method 2

1. Firstly, open IIS and select the website that is causing the 401.
2. Then open the “Authentication” property under the “IIS” header.
3. Now right-click the “Anonymous Authentication” item and click “Edit”.
4. Select “Application Pool Identity” in a popup.
5. lastly, Press OK.

Simple Method 3

Make sure the user has access granted to the folder. Removing the group SERVER\Users (that contains DOMAIN\Users inside a group) from the folder may result in the “401 unauthorized access is denied due to invalid credentials” error.

Method 4

By using the SQL command:

<pre lang="xml">
Step 1] Go to the respective path for example D:\...\Images
Step 2] Open web.config and comment authorization/allow for specific users
</pre>

Method 5

1. Primarily, open IIS Manager and select the website that is causing the 401.
2. Then open the “Authentication” property under the “IIS” header.
3. Now click the “Windows Authentication” item and click “Advanced Settings” from the right.
4. Finally, set “Extended Protection” to “OFF”.

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Conclusion

In this article, we have explained about the 401 unauthorized access is denied due to invalid credentials in Plesk, along with different methods to fix it from our Support team.