Relative Paths in Winforms

If you are expecting a resource to be in the same directory as the executable file or in a sub directory of that directory, it's best to always use

string fullPath = System.IO.Path.Combine(System.IO.Directory.GetCurrentDirectory(), subPath);

or if you are worried that the working directory might be wrong you can do this:

string fullPath = System.IO.Path.Combine(System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(System.Reflection.Assembly.GetEntryAssembly().Location), subPath);

I recommend not using relative paths in the first place.

Use Path.Combine to turn your relative paths into absolute paths. For example, you can use this to get the full path to your startup EXE:

string exeFile = (new System.Uri(Assembly.GetEntryAssembly().CodeBase)).AbsolutePath;

Once you have that, you can get it's directory:

string exeDir = Path.GetDirectoryName(exeFile);

and turn your relative path to an absolute path:

string fullPath = Path.Combine(exeDir, "..\\..\\Images\\Texture.dds");

This will be much more reliable than trying to use relative paths.