Access to path **** is denied

Question

I know there is a ton of stuff on this already and have tried a few things but have had no luck in fixing it.

I have a C# program that has built an XML Document and im trying to save it to a folder thats in MyDocuments. I am getting the folliwing exception when calling the XMLDoc.Save function.

Access to the path 'C:\\Users\\Ash\\Documents\\ConfigOutput' is denied

I have visual studio running as administrator. Any thoughts on how to fix it?

I have tried saving onto the desktop and into the C:\\ folder aswell.

I am using windows 7.

Running the built executable also doesnt seem to work.

Apologies guys it seems I was being stupid. I had indeed not added a filename to the output path. I'll not delete the question incase anyone else gets done by this gotcha! Thanks for all the help/comments.

Answer 1

There are a few possibilities:

• ConfigOutput is a folder
• ConfigOutput is a file that is in use (opened)
• You're not logged in as User 'Ash'

You should not normally have to run as Admin to write to your own Documents folder.

Answer 2

You need to check and get permission to that directory/file your writing.. for that use Security namesapce

var permissionSet = new PermissionSet(PermissionState.None);    
var writePermission = new FileIOPermission(FileIOPermissionAccess.Write, pathToFolder);
permissionSet.AddPermission(writePermission);

if (permissionSet.IsSubsetOf(AppDomain.CurrentDomain.PermissionSet))
{
    // do your stuff
}
else
{
    // alternative stuff
}

Answer 3

It looks like you're not specifying a filename and therefore it can't create a file with the same name as an existing directory - so try changing your path to:

C:\\Users\\Ash\\Documents\\ConfigOutput\\Out.xml

Answer 4

Try run your app as administrator.

If you want to debug your app, start your Visual Studio as administrator also.

To force app start as administrator take a look at this thread: How do I force my .NET application to run as administrator?

PS Check if your file is not already opened by another FileStream or etc.

Answer 5

I don't know if this makes a difference, but you may want to specify the folder in a relative rather than absolute manner: Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.MyDocuments) will provide you with the path of the current user's documents. Check if it's different from the one you provide.

If so, you may need to run the app under a different user or administrator as others have pointed out. Obviously one user isn't allowed to just save files into another user's documents folder.

For me when I debug my app from Visual Studio the documents folder is the same as the user I'm currently logged in as and running Visual Studio under.

You could try <requestedExecutionLevel level="asInvoker" uiAccess="true|false"/> first and progressively move to highestAvailable and requireAdministrator .

Alternatively, demand the permissions, catch the exception and print it out:

try {
        FileIOPermission fileIOPermission = new FileIOPermission(FileIOPermissionAccess.AllAccess, myDocFolderFile);
        fileIOPermission.Demand();
    } catch (SecurityException se) {
        Debug.WriteLine(se.ToString());
    }