Find windows folder programmatically in c#

Question

I am writing a program to kill and restart explorer but I don't want to hard code the location because some people install windows in different places (for example I found someone who had it installed in the d:\ drive where the C:\ drive did exist but had nothing installed on it)

I tried looking under Environment.SpecialFolder. but I don't see a "windows" option under that

What is the best way to do this?

Answer 1

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/77zkk0b6.aspx

Try these:

Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("SystemRoot")

Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("windir")

Answer 2

Environment.GetFolderPath( Environment.SpecialFolder.Windows ) will return the path to the Windows folder. Recommend this approach over the environment variable, because using an API that does exactly what we want (.NET 4.0 and above).

Answer 3

I would highly recommend the use of:

Directory.GetParent(Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.System))

It does NOT require administrator rights and supports all versions of the .NET framework.