59
votes

How can I find out the folder where the windows service .exe file is installed dynamically?

Path.GetFullPath(relativePath);

returns a path based on C:\WINDOWS\system32 directory.

However, the XmlDocument.Load(string filename) method appears to be working against relative path inside the directory where the service .exe file is installed to.

7

7 Answers

84
votes

Try

System.Reflection.Assembly.GetEntryAssembly().Location
70
votes

Try this:

AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory

(Just like here: How to find windows service exe path)

39
votes
Path.GetDirectoryName(System.Reflection.Assembly.GetEntryAssembly().Location)
5
votes

This works for our windows service:

//CommandLine without the first and last two characters
//Path.GetDirectory seems to have some difficulties with these (special chars maybe?)
string cmdLine = Environment.CommandLine.Remove(Environment.CommandLine.Length - 2, 2).Remove(0, 1);
string workDir = Path.GetDirectoryName(cmdLine);  

This should give you the absolute path of the executable.

5
votes

Another version of the above:

string path = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location;
FileInfo fileInfo = new FileInfo(path);
string dir = fileInfo.DirectoryName;
3
votes

Environment.CurrentDirectory returns current directory where program is running. In case of windows service, returns %WINDIR%/system32 path that is where executable will run rather than where executable deployed.

-4
votes

This should give you the path that the executable resides in:

Environment.CurrentDirectory;

If not, you could try:

Directory.GetParent(Assembly.GetEntryAssembly().Location).FullName

A more hacky, but functional way:

Path.GetFullPath("a").TrimEnd('a')

:)