Admin Link at the top of the page

Hello, so I just got my 4.00 code deployed to production (horray!) When I log in with my admin account it takes me back to the "home page" and acts like I never logged in. I do not see the black "administrator" link at the top and when I hit "login" again I do log in and it takes me back to the HomePage without the link. Now if I type in /admin at the end it does take me to the admin section...

I know in the past you had to add the machine key to the web.config but in the upgrade pdf it says that was removed and no longer needed.

Thoughts?

Update. I now notice that when I add an item to my cart, then go to my cart it says its empty. I also notice when I go to the login page it shows the "admin" link at the top, but not on the other pages.