Why is the login window popping up over and over when I try to clone a repository?

[Chris Cote]

Every time I try to clone my company's online repository, I am prompted with a pop-up window to log into Altassian. When I enter my credentials, the window closes and a new one opens, again asking me for my password. This goes on forever. Here is the process I am doing:

1. Open Sourcetree. I am currently logged into my Altassian account and I can see all of the repositories to which I have access.
2. Click on "Clone" for the repository that I want to clone.
3. This takes me to the normal clone page, where I can see the repo link and choose a folder to clone it into. Upon getting to this screen, a pop-up comes up prompting me to log into my account.
4. I enter the credentials for my account. The window closes, but then pops up again prompting me to log in. This will go on forever.

No matter what I do, any time I want to clone a repo, I am presented with this pop-up and it is never satisfied with my response. I have tried the following things

• I reset my password to make sure I didn't simply forget it. The new password works for logging into my account (for example on the website), but did not help with this issue.
• I deleted my account in Sourcetree Tools -> Options -> Authentication and re-added it in order to try resetting the authentication. Still I am getting the never ending pop up every time I try to clone.
• I created an app password to use for logging into the app. When I enter the app password, the same issue persists and the window just keeps popping up over and over.
• I have tried manually cloning the repo using the git clone command in Windows cmd prompt. Again, the login window pops up forever.

One thing to note is that I am only experiencing this on my work laptop. On my home desktop PC (I work a hybrid schedule), I have Sourcetree and was able to do all of the cloning I needed without any issues.

On my work laptop I have admin privilege, so I can install/uninstall software as needed, but I simply cannot get this to work.

[Andy Heinzer]

Hi Chris,

Sorry to hear about this problem.  But this sounds like sourcetree might be holding on to an older and now invalid credentials.  As some other users have reported in threads such as https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Sourcetree-questions/How-to-update-HTTP-S-credentials-in-sourcetree/qaq-p/297564

It might be necessary to remove the passwd file from C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Atlassian\SourceTree on Windows or ~/Library/Application Support/SourceTree on a Mac.

Uninstalling and reinstalling doesn't necessarily remove this particular file from your system.

I would expect that you do need to use an App Password now from Bitbucket as we have deprecated the use of just account passwords per https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Bitbucket-articles/Announcement-Bitbucket-Cloud-account-password-usage-for-Git-over/ba-p/1948231