FileSystemWatcher UNC Path Invalid

[Guest]

I'm attempting to use the FileSystemWatcher class to monitor a folder on a
remote server. My app is running as a Windows service, currently on an XP
machine, but it will be on Server 2003 in production. Everything works fine
when I set the Path to a local drive (i.e. "C:\Test"). However, when I
attempt to set the Path to a UNC path to my remote folder (i.e.
"\\servername\share" with an actual server and share name of course), I
receive an error stating that "The directory name \\servername\share is
invalid."

I have read many posts and articles by others with this same issue. The
common response is that they don't have the proper security settings for the
service. I had checked and triple checked that for my service, however, and
my service is running with a domain account that has Full-Control access to
the directory in question. Does anyone have any other ideas about what might
be causing this problem? Any advice would be appreciated...

Thanks,
Greg

 

[Toff McGowen]

what is the type of the exception?

tm

 

[Michael D. Ober]

By default, services run under an account (LocalSystem) that doesn't have
network access. Configure your service to log in with an account that does
have network access.

Mike Ober.

 

[Guest]

Hi Mike and Toff,

Thank you very much for your input. If you look at my original post you'll
see that I had configured my service to use a network domain account, so I
was puzzled as to why it wasn't working. After messing around with it for
several painful hours yesterday, I finally figured out what the problem was.
It turns out I had granted security access to the target directory for the
domain account I was using, which I thought was sufficient. In reality, what
I needed to do was to log in to the server itself and grant rights to the
domain user to access the share, via the permissions button on the Sharing
dialog box. Live and learn. Thanks again for your suggestions.

-Greg