Solution to "Configuration system failed to initialize"

2008-03-01

I got this error today: “Configuration system failed to initialize” while loading a config file. Looking at the web.config file it wasn’t obvious what the problem was.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> 
<configuration> 
  <appSettings> 
    <add key="PhotoDirectory" value="C:\_my\_dev\x\x\Photos\Members\"/> 
  </appSettings> 
  <configSections> 
  </configSections> 
  <connectionStrings> 
    <add name="MicrosoftSocialConnectionString"
            connectionString="Data Source=(local);Initial Catalog=x;Integrated Security=True"
            providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" /> 
    </connectionStrings> 
</configuration>

I then remembered that I ran into a similiar problem before when I configSections wasn’t the firstChild of the configuration node. Moving appSettings under configSections solved this problem.

I know there are other solutions to this error message, but this one worked for me.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> 
<configuration> 
  <configSections> 
  </configSections> 
  <appSettings> 
    <add key="PhotoDirectory" value="C:\_my\_dev\x\x\Photos\Members\"/> 
  </appSettings> 
  <connectionStrings> 
    <add name="MicrosoftSocialConnectionString"
            connectionString="Data Source=(local);Initial Catalog=x;Integrated Security=True"
            providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" /> 
    </connectionStrings> 
</configuration>

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