Error Message: The directory name is invalid

Over the last week I was working on serialization of a generic domain model to XML. I had seen a few examples of using Silverlight 3's new feature SaveFileDialog(), so I implemented it in order to save the XML to my local hard drive. I got this error - the directory name is invalid.



I asked a friend who is learning Silverlight to create a small project using SaveFileDialog() command, and it worked for him without a problem. He sent me the project, I ran it unchanged, and I go the same error. So I ran this Google search:

Silverlight "The directory name is invalid"

and found some helpful entries about Protected Mode in IE. I followed the instructions to turn off Protected Mode:

Tool .. Internet Options .. Security. Here is the picture.



I checked MSN to see what I was giving up by unchecking the box. This is what it said:

Understanding Protected Mode

Protected Mode is an important step forward in security for Internet Explorer (IE); it helps protect users from attack by running an IE process with greatly restricted privileges on Windows Vista. While Protected Mode does not protect against all forms of attack, it significantly reduces the ability of an attack to write, alter, or destroy data on the user's machine or to install malicious code.

Disabling this would sound bad to any user. Furthermore, being in the reduced security mode affected my Google home page and my Twitter login.

What looked like this:



Now looks like this:



As you can see, this would be very confusing for someone using your application, who is expecting the File...Save option to act like it would in any other desktop application. In fact, turning off Protected Mode is likely to scare users away. For this reason I have decided to add other options for the user to persist information, like saving to an account on the server or in isolated storage.

To finish on a positive note the blogs say that Microsoft will be fixing this issue before the final release of Silverlight 3.