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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-29T23:23:57+00:00

I have looked around the internet for 3 hours now looking for a solution

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I have looked around the internet for 3 hours now looking for a solution to my problem and I’m starting to wonder if anyone else has ever had this exact problem?

I am using IIS7 to host a website that does some local things around our office. Well, developing the site everything worked fine, but now that I am hosting the site I cannot (and neither can anyone else for that matter) click on the link to download the file that is needed. (lets just pretend they click on a link to download some random file from the webserver)

Well, it fails downloading the file from what I can guess as being a permissions error. I have looked for a solution but cannot seem to find one. I know very little about IIS7 so I do not understand very much about the Application Pool Identity stuff, although I did manage to grant full access for that identity to the file/folders. Anyways, here is the specific area it is messing up on..

This is a piece of the default.cshtml page that calls a Function from a .cs file:
//well.. pretty close to the exact thing, just got rid of a bunch of unecessary junk

@{
string tmp = Functions.downloadFile(fileName)
}

<html>
tmp
</html>

This is the part of the .cs file that actually downloads the file to the desktop

public static string downloadFile(string fileName) //i know this example doesnt 
//use filename, but the original code does.
{
    if (Directory.Exists("C:\WebSite\thingsToDownload"))
    {
        string[] files = Directory.GetFiles("C:\WebSite\thingsToDownload");

        foreach (string s in files)
        {
            string[] tmp = s.Split('\\');
            try
            {
                File.Copy(s,
                          Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.Desktop)
                          + "\\" + tmp[tmp.Length - 1]);
            }
            catch (Exception e)
            {
                return "ERROR COPYING: " + e.Message;
            }
        }
        return "GOOD";
    }
    return "DIRECTORY DOESNT EXIST";
}

After that is all said and done, i get “ERROR COPYING: Access to the path ‘\fileName’ is denied.

My Guess is that the webserver does not have access to the person’s desktop in order to put the files there.
If anyone can shed some light and help me get this it would be greatly appreciated!

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    If you want to download a file by clicking a link you should use response.

    Here’s a sample you can use for example when a user clicks a link or button or something:

      const string fName = @"C:\picture.bmp";
  FileInfo fi = new FileInfo(fName);
  long sz = fi.Length;

  Response.ClearContent();
  Response.ContentType = Path.GetExtension(fName);
  Response.AddHeader("Content-Disposition", string.Format("attachment; filename = {0}",System.IO.Path.GetFileName(fName)));
  Response.AddHeader("Content-Length", sz.ToString("F0"));
  Response.TransmitFile(fName);
  Response.End();
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