New Web Application Access Denied

Good morning,

I have a web application at present with Deny All permissions applied via an AD group.

I have created a new web application with full access policies to all authenticated users.

The new web application has the same managed paths setup as per the original web application.

I have backed up a number of sites from the original web application and restored them to the new one, ensuring that they have retained there managed path locations.

Unfortunately any user who is a member of the Deny All permissions group on the original web application tries to access this site in the new web application they receive access denied.

I have tried:

• Adding the users specifically into the site.
• Checked that the Master pages have domain users and authenticated users permissions.
• When creating a new site in the new web application these users can access fine.
• I have checked the sites over in SPD and found no traces of the previous deny-all permissions group.
• If I put my account into the deny-all permissions group I cannot access the site in the new web application, once I remove it I can.
• This is being tested across two different farms, at the same patch level and on the same domain.
• I have given everybody full access permissions to no avail.
• I have backed up and restored the sites a few times to ensure that there where no backup issues.
• The sites are being restored into a clean database.  This has been deleted and recreated also.

If anyone has any suggestions they will be appreciated.

Many thanks.

Kind regards, Kev