RabbitMQ, Erlang: How to "make sure the erlang cookies are the same"

In my case, for some reason the cookie (.erlang.cookie) stored under C:\Windows\ was different from the one I had stored under my home (%HOMEDRIVE% %HOMEPATH%, which was C:\ for me).

Once I copied the cookie from C:\Windows into my my home folder everything started working.

For what it's worth, in 2018, the docs are WRONG. In windows 10, the default location of the cookie file appears to be:

C:\Windows\System32\config\systemprofile

and NOT

C:\Windows

as the docs say.

The best thing to do is to look at the log file, which is typically located in your user %AppData%\Roaming\RabbitMQ\log directory.

The log file contains this entry, which helped me determine the cookie location:

node           : rabbit@computername
home dir       : C:\WINDOWS\system32\config\systemprofile