I'm having trouble with disabling File Change Notification on my .NET 2 / 3.5 webserver. I have an app that removes directories once in a while, every time that happens I get 'dir change or directory rename HostingEnvironment initiated shutdown'

I put this key in, as instructed - then rebooted.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ASP.NET]
"FCNMode"=dword:00000001

-Is it in the wrong place, when I delete a directory the site still recycles? 

Also:

-Is there any way to switch of FCN programatically via my global.asax or any other method?
-If so would setting up my own FCN service (that just monitors certain config files) and using 'System.Web.HttpRuntime.UnloadAppDomain();' be identical to the native one?

 I found this somewhere on your site, which solved it:

//FIX disable AppDomain restart when deleting subdirectory

//This code will turn off monitoring from the root website directory.

//Monitoring of Bin, App_Themes and other folders will still be operational, so updated DLLs will still auto deploy.

System.Reflection.PropertyInfo p = typeof(System.Web.HttpRuntime).GetProperty("FileChangesMonitor", System.Reflection.BindingFlags.NonPublic | System.Reflection.BindingFlags.Public | System.Reflection.BindingFlags.Static);

object o = p.GetValue(null, null);

System.Reflection.FieldInfo f = o.GetType().GetField("_dirMonSubdirs", System.Reflection.BindingFlags.Instance | System.Reflection.BindingFlags.NonPublic | System.Reflection.BindingFlags.IgnoreCase);

object monitor = f.GetValue(o);

System.Reflection.MethodInfo m = monitor.GetType().GetMethod("StopMonitoring", System.Reflection.BindingFlags.Instance | System.Reflection.BindingFlags.NonPublic); m.Invoke(monitor, new object[] { });

I think the path of the registry key is correct.

Have you tried restart IIS and see if the new setting takes?

I don't believe you can switch off file change notification programatically.

I had rebooted actually, but it's fine now..

The above code, when attached to my global.asax (app start), stopped file change notifications only on the sub dirs - it was the perfect solution as touching web.config or /bin/ still correctly causes a refresh.

Thanks for the awesome piece of code. In my tests, without the code, deleting a directory causes the application to restart, with the code it does not. Touching the web.config or the bin still causes the application to restart.

 Yep, that's the experience I have.. I've now been using it since I posted it and it's been working flawlessly..

 I can't believe this isn't mentioned more, considering the nature of most web apps these days, this is a serious issue - app restarts cause many issues eg: a user uploads an image and the temp file is located within the app dir (which it may be for a lot of people) the app loses it's state!