File move access denied caused by VS2013 project settings (maybe?)

Question

I'm having trouble with an application which moves files from one location to another, using the Windows API. The problem isn't the code, it appears to be the project settings, but I don't know what to look for or where.

I created a project, wrote a load of code and then got to implementing the move bit. On testing I kept getting an 'access denied' result. After lots of head scratching I created a new project to unit test the move code. It worked just fine. I copied the known working code wholesale into the original project, deleted everything else and reran it. Access Denied. So the only difference between the two projects is whatever is in the project settings. I also checked the security setting in Explorer for both exe files. Both are the same with me as the owner.

Please can anyone suggest what I need to check/change in the settings? I don't want to wade through trying to compare the both project settings manually.

Many thanks.

For anyone interested the code I'm running is:

#include <windows.h>
#include <string>
#include <stdio.h>

void main(int argc, char** argv)
{
std::string srcPath = "S:\\_UploadTests\\Oct_10";
std::string dstPath = "S:\\_archivedtests\\Oct_10";

BYTE flags;
flags = MOVEFILE_COPY_ALLOWED | MOVEFILE_REPLACE_EXISTING;

if (!MoveFileExA(srcPath.c_str(), dstPath.c_str(), flags)) {
    fprintf(stderr, "Error moving folder to local archive. \n\tWindows returned code: %ld\n", GetLastError());
}
getchar();
}

Answer 1

OK, so there were a number of things going on, but I've found the issue.

Firstly and most importantly, it had nothing to do with the Solution settings! The move was being executed as a copy and delete (there' a flag for this option). Sometimes the copy would succeed, but the delete wouldn't and I'd kill the process before Windows could tidy up the mess I'd made. In short sometimes I'd kill the process and sometimes I'd let it terminate naturally, resulting in the file system being in different states, which caused confusion when trying to understand what was going on.

So why was there an issue sometimes when Windows tried to delete the file? Well in my original project I use a function that recursively goes through the folders and collects a list of their contents. This function wasn't releasing the folders on completion, thus causing an access denied error when the later move function tried to do its stuff.

Why did the Access Denied still happen when I tried running the above code snippet above? Dunno, but it's something of a moot point now.

Thanks for the support guys.