Why is access to the path denied?

According to File.Delete Method...

An UnauthorizedAccessException means one of 4 things:

  • The caller does not have the required permission.
  • The file is an executable file that is in use.
  • Path is a directory.
  • Path specified a read-only file.

I also had the problem, hence me stumbling on this post. I added the following line of code before and after a Copy / Delete.

Delete

File.SetAttributes(file, FileAttributes.Normal);
File.Delete(file);

Copy

File.Copy(file, dest, true);
File.SetAttributes(dest, FileAttributes.Normal);

This is an old issue, but I ran into it while searching. Turns out that I was missing the actual filename component in the save path for SaveAs...

string uploadPath = Server.MapPath("~/uploads");
file.SaveAs(uploadPath); // BAD
file.SaveAs(Path.Combine(uploadPath, file.FileName)); // GOOD

When a user tries to connect to your Web site, IIS assigns the connection to the IUSER_ComputerName account, where ComputerName is the name of the server on which IIS is running. By default, the IUSER_ComputerName account is a member of the Guests group. This group has security restrictions. Try to grand access to IUSER_ComputerName to that folder

Here is very good described answer about IIS security

Hope this helps


I got the error because I didn't realize that the destination should be a file. I had a folder as the second parameter (which works in cmd). and I got Unhandled Exception: System.UnauthorizedAccessException: Access to the path is denied. because C# File.Move wants a file there, not just for the first parameter, but for the second too, and so if you put a directory as second parameter, it's trying to write a file like c:\crp when you have a directory called c:\crp.

this would be incorrect File.Move(args[0],"c:\\crp");

So, this would be correct File.Move(args[0],"c:\\crp\\a.a");

The same goes for File.Copy