Cannot clone private GitHub repository (and yes, I'm using a PAT)

[Tom Smith]

Ok, a bazillion people have posted about this symptom.  And they all start with "but I'm different."  Well, me too.

I just refreshed my PAT in GitHub and reentered it as the password for my account in SourceTree.  Now when I go to clone I can see all my repositories, public and private.  But when I select a private one the message shows "This is not a valid source path / URL", and the details say that authentication failed.  Here's what I know:

• This all used to work as recently as a month ago.  Sigh.
• I've updated SourceTree and the embedded Git
• There's only one configured account and it's set to default
• Clearing saved passwords didn't help

This is on Windows, in case that matters.  Stuck!

[Tom Smith · Accepted solution]

Ok, I resolved (?) this as follows, adapting one of the password-clearing tips:

1. Changed authentication for the account from basic to OAuth, sign in
2. Close SourceTree
3. Remove the file C:\Users\Tom\AppData\Local\Atlassian\SourceTree\passwd
4. Start SourceTree
5. Do a pull or something else that requires authentication.  Even though the OAuth token is current you are still prompted for a password here.
6. Paste in your Personal Access Token for the password

And you're back up.  My mac configuration did not have this issue, and it's not using a PAT anywhere.  It was at OAuth already, which is the main reason I did step 1 to get them consistent.

But it looks like there is a super-double-secret password storage that is invisible and separate from what you see in the Accounts section.   Urp.

[Lester Bloom]

I just wanted to say thank you for sharing your solution. I spent hours trying to get my new install working. The "delete the passwd file" step fixed me up. Cheers

[Nikolas Nikolaou]

Thank you so much. I've been struggling with this for ages. You are a hero.