Simple Membership Accounts not Writing to Database

Simple Membership Accounts not Writing to Database

I'm trying to set up Simple Membership on a 4.0 MVC4 website. I am using a
SQLexpress instance on my local machine for development.
My Default Connection string worked to write the tables when I hit an
[Authorize] action the first time. And the login action appears to hit the
database and return an incorrect username or password error. Since there
is nothing in the db, all entries will be incorrect.
I believe that the problem is the provider. The ASP.NET configuration
tool, which I use to write the first credential, tells me that the default
provider is AspNetSqlProvider. I've tried to set up a Membership section
in the web config file, clear that default and make sqlmembershipprovider
the default. That results in an assortment of errors, with the
configuration tool telling me it can't connect to the provider and the
debugger stalling on the InitializeSimpleMembershipAttributes ensure
initialized filter, which prevents a second creation of the tables.
I would be very grateful for advice.