You might find some useful hints here:

http://www.eggheadcafe.com/articles/20041204.asp
// nasty bug in FileSystemWatcher fires twice (in about 4 ms) on changed
file. This is a workaround...



I'm not sure if it will help you, but sometimes its nice to see what someone
else tried.





"Jeff Mason" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> I'm trying to write some code that will detect changes in a Windows
> Service app's
> .config file and reflect the modified appSetting entry in my code.
>
> We have a windows Service we've written and every once in a while we need
> to modify a
> setting in its .config file. Right now we restart the service whenever
> the config
> entry changes.
>
> We'd like to have the .config update be recognized automatically.
>
> It's easy enough to hang a FileSystemWatcher off the application's .config
> file to
> detect a change. In the event handler I am executing:
>
> ConfigurationManager.RefreshSection("appSettings")
>
> but this seems to have no effect. The value returned by subsequently
> referencing
> ConfigurationManager.AppSettings(<somekey>) is the original value, not the
> one just
> changed.
>
> The help for RefreshSection claims: "Refreshes the named section so the
> next time it
> is retrieved it will be re-read from disk." but this doesn't appear to
> work.
>
> What am I doing wrong?
>
> Thanks for any help.
>
> - Jeff
>
> -- Jeff

Good to know. Thanks for the followup.


"Jeff Mason" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> On Wed, 9 Jul 2008 13:31:59 -0400, "sloan" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
>>You might find some useful hints here:
>>
>>http://www.eggheadcafe.com/articles/20041204.asp
>
> Thank you.
>
> I think I have a handle on what may be going on. The problem I'm having
> may be
> related to my running/debugging within the VS2005 environment. There are
> these
> <app>.vshost.* files that may be getting in the way. It sort of looks
> like the
> caching of config data is from the <app>.vshost.exe.config file and not
> the
> <app>.exe.config as it normally is in a "stand-alone" mode.
>
> I found that running my tests in a stand-alone environment works as I
> expected.
> Running inside VS2005 will work if I edit the <app>.vshost.exe.config and
> watch for
> changes on that file.
>
> Go figure.
>
> -- Jeff