"A referral was returned from the server" exception when accessing AD from C#

Probably the path you supplied was not correct. Check that.

I would recomment the article Howto: (Almost) Everything In Active Directory via C# which really helped me in the past in dealing with AD.

A referral is sent by an AD server when it doesn't have the information requested itself, but know that another server have the info. It usually appears in trust environment where a DC can refer to a DC in trusted domain.

In your case you are only specifying a domain, relying on automatic lookup of what domain controller to use. I think that you should try to find out what domain controller is used for the query and look if that one really holds the requested information.

If you provide more information on your AD setup, including any trusts/subdomains, global catalogues and the DNS resource records for the domain controllers it will be easier to help you.

This is the answer for the question.Reason for the cause is my LDAP string was wrong.

    try
    {
        string adServer = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["Server"];
        string adDomain = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["Domain"];
        string adUsername = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["AdiminUsername"];
        string password = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["Password"];
        string[] dc = adDomain.Split('.');
        string dcAdDomain = string.Empty;

        foreach (string item in dc)
        {
            if (dc[dc.Length - 1].Equals(item))
                dcAdDomain = dcAdDomain + "DC=" + item;
            else
                dcAdDomain = dcAdDomain + "DC=" + item + ",";
        }

        DirectoryEntry de = new DirectoryEntry("LDAP://" + adServer + "/CN=Users," + dcAdDomain, adUsername, password);

        DirectorySearcher ds = new DirectorySearcher(de);

        ds.SearchScope = SearchScope.Subtree;

        ds.Filter = "(&(objectClass=User)(sAMAccountName=" + username + "))";

        if (ds.FindOne() != null)
            return true;
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
        ExLog(ex);
    }
    return false;