Question

Background:

I built an installer for my app, and all my dll’s and content files are getting correctly copied to the C:\Program Files\MyCompany\MyApp directory. When I run my app from Visual Studio, everything works great. When I run the installed version of my app, however, I get a DirectoryNotFoundException. The problem seems to be with Environment.CurrentDirectory.

I was expecting Environment.CurrentDirectory to be…

"C:\\Program Files\\MyCompany\\MyApp"

…but it was actually…

"C:\\Documents and Settings\\DanThMan"

What’s going on here? How do I solve this?

Thanks.

EDIT:

Okay, hmm. This problem only occurs if I run the Start Menu shortcut. If I run MyApp.exe directly, everything is fine.

EDIT 2:

I think I’ve gotten to the bottom of this now. In my Installer (which is a Visual Studio SetupProject), the Start Menu shortcut has a property called WorkingFolder, which “Specifies the folder where the target application for the shortcut will be installed.” I had accidentally set WorkingFolder to “MyCompany”. It should be “Application Folder”. Now that I have it set correctly, Environment.CurrentDirectory is once again working as expected. Thanks for all your help.

EDIT 3:

However, reading the warnings below, I have decided to go with the following as a replacement for Environment.CurrentDirectory:

System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(System.Reflection.Assembly.GetEntryAssembly().Location);

Answer 1

If you want to get the path to the directory under which your executable runs, you should not rely on the Environment.CurrentDirectory, since it can be changed in a number of ways (shotrtcut settings, etc). Try one of these options instead:

System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(Application.ExecutablePath);

or

System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(System.Reflection.Assembly.GetEntryAssembly().Location);