WinSCP hangs while authenticating public key

Hello, I am relatively new to SSH, but I have just completed setting up copSSH on our Windows 2003 server, and have made all of the port forwarding and configuration changes to allow the ssh connection on a different port than 22. I have created the public and private keys on the client computer, and copied the contents of the public key creation (from PuttyGen) into the .ssh/authorized_keys file.

When I go to connect remotely (from winxp machine), I get prompted for the username, which I enter (and which has been explicitly permitted in the server's sshd_config file). It then says "Authenticating with public key ..." and I enter the passphrase that I created in PuttyGen. Then, the connection seems to hang, waiting for a response from the server. WinSCP tells me that the "Host has not answered for more than 15 seconds. Still waiting..." and it just sits here, never seeming to complete the authentication.

When I try to connect without using a private/public key pair, I am able to connect fine (using password).

I have tried connecting with putty, and the same thing happens, it just hangs during public key authentication. I'm sure it is something simple that I am missing, but I would appreciate it if someone might be able to help me out.

Thanks,
Paul

Check the server's log to see if you find anything useful there.

I have looked in the event log of the windows server, and it says that the public key is accepted, but then provides no information as to why the server isn't responding after that. I have found that the only way to get it to work is by giving the user account administrator privileges, which I would prefer not to do. I have tried using just a "restricted user" account and giving full control to the entire copSSH directory, but still, it hangs seemingly after it already authenticates the public key.

Is there any reason that you can think of why having administrator privileges would allow it to respond?

I even tried giving the remote user account (assigned to a separate user group "sshgroup") full control access to all of C:, and still it will hang during the public key authentication, so it doesn't seem to be just that the account needs access to something, it seems that it is a configuration issue with copssh...

I found the problem was a bad .bashrc file on the remote sever. When a use logs in, this file executed first thing. Well, the file was bad, which stopped the process dead cold.