Jon Gallant

Solution to "Configuration system failed to initialize"

1 min read
aspnet

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>


```text


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


<?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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