Win32Exception: The directory name is invalid

c# processstartinfo win32exception
mrtaikandi picture mrtaikandi · Jun 13, 2009 · Viewed 37.5k times · Source

I'm trying to run a process as a different user that has Administrator privilege in 2 different computers running Vista and their UAC enabled but in one of them I get a Win32Exception that says "The directory name is invalid"

Can anyone tell me what is wrong with my code?

var myFile = "D:\\SomeFolder\\MyExecutable.exe";
var workingFolder = "D:\\SomeFolder";
var pInfo = new System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo();
pInfo.FileName = myFile;
pInfo.WorkingDirectory = workingFolder;
pInfo.Arguments = myArgs;
pInfo.LoadUserProfile = true;
pInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
pInfo.UserName = {UserAccount};
pInfo.Password = {SecureStringPassword};
pInfo.Domain = ".";

System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(pInfo);

UPDATE

The application that executes the above code has requireAdministrator execution level. I even set the working folder to "Path.GetDirectoryName(myFile)" and "New System.IO.FileInfo(myFile).DirectoryName"

Answer

Chandler picture Chandler · Aug 1, 2014

You need to specify the WorkingDirectory property of ProcessStartInfo`. From Win32Exception error code 267 "The directory name is invalid":

I'm currently working on an "Automated Run As" tool. Its goal is helping admins which, like me, have to give users a means to execute one or two programs as Administrator and would like to do so without having to surrender an admin's password.

So, I'm developing on Vista and I just whipped up a small proof of concept prototype, that'd run calc.exe as a different user, using ProcessStartInfo and Process. This worked fine when I executed it as myself (a rather pointless exercise, I must admit), but when I created a new user and tried to run it as him, I stumbled upon a Win32Exception complaining that the directory name is invalid, native error code 267. I was instsantly baffled, as I knew of no supplied directory name that could be invalid. I then tested the code on an XP machine and it worked!

I started googling on it to no avail, many reports of that error but no conclusive solution, or on different contexts. Finally, after a while it dawned on me, I wasn't specifying the WorkingDirectory property of the ProcessStartInfo class, as soon as I added the lines

FileInfo fileInfo = new FileInfo(path); startInfo.WorkingDirectory = fileInfo.DirectoryName;

To my code, it was allowed to run code as different than logged in user. ...

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