Validating Password Via Sproc - SQL 2005 Express

Hello,

I am trying to validate a user via a stored procedure. This works OK until I try to validate the password, at which point the validation fails (even though the password is OK). Below is my sproc. If I comment out AND m.Password = @Password the sproc is OK. I am passing in the password as a string when testing the sproc. Any ideas? J.

 ALTER Proc [dbo].[pru_VerifyApproveUser]

@UserName nvarchar(256),
@Password nvarchar(128),
@ApplicationName nvarchar(256)AS

BEGIN

IF EXISTS(Select * from dbo.aspnet_Membership WHERE Email = @UserName)BEGIN DECLARE @UserId uniqueidentifier
SELECT @UserId = NULL
SELECT @UserId = u.UserId

FROM dbo.aspnet_Membership m, dbo.aspnet_Users u, dbo.aspnet_Applications a
WHERE LoweredUserName = LOWER(@UserName) AND
u.ApplicationId = a.ApplicationId AND
LOWER(@ApplicationName) = a.LoweredApplicationName AND
u.UserId = m.UserId AND
m.Password = @Password

-- If @Userid is Null - then the above credentials are not satisfied
-- e.g. wrong password/username combo..

IF (@UserId IS NULL)

BEGIN

RETURN 2

END

Update dbo.aspnet_Membership

SET IsApproved = 1

WHERE Email = @UserName

RETURN 1

END

END