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
}