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Asked: 2026-05-15T06:51:47+00:00

We recently started working with XML files, after many years of experience with the

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We recently started working with XML files, after many years of experience with the old INI files.

My coworker found some CodeProject sample code that uses System.Xml.XmlDocument.Save. We are getting exceptions when two programs try to write to the same file at the same time.

System.IO.IOException: The process
cannot access the file ‘C:\Test.xml’
because it is being used by another
process.

This seems obvious in hindsight, but we had not anticipated it because accessing INI files via the Win32 API does not have this limitation. I assume there’s some arbitration done by the Win32 calls that work at a higher level than the the XmlDocument.Save method.

I’m hoping there are higher level XML routines somewhere in the .Net library that work similarily to the Win32 functions, but don’t know where to start looking.

Or maybe we can set up our file access permissions to allow multiple programs to write to the same file?

Time is short (like almost all SW projects), and if we can’t find a solution quickly, we’ll have to hold our noses and go back to INI files.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    This isn’t going to work. Even if the 2 processes could write to the same file, it would just corrupt your file. If you really need multiple programs writing at the same time, I would use a database instead.

    Or could you split your single XML file up into separate files? Let each process write to its own file, then combine all of the files together during your “Read” method.

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