Yesterday afternoon, my web application broke.  I have a page that takes a user data file and saves it to the server.  I have a web service that takes the contents of a file and does the same thing.  A process consumes these files on our development server.  I am developing part of it on my machine and dropping the file to the DEV machine for consumption, so I’m creating files on a UNC path.  Mysteriously I started getting UnauthorizedAccessException, but my code had been working.  I didn’t change anything.  I double-checked all the important stuff (identity impersonation, security, etc), and everything was in order.  I did the normal research. . . Google groups.  For all of you Googlers out there having problems with this exception, I have a solution.  Reboot!  I checked everything I could think of, and I remembered the rule of thumb that I always tell everyone else:  “When in doubt, reboot.”  Since I’ve been using Win XP and now 2003 Server as my dev OS, I haven’t had to do much rebooting.  My home computer (XP Pro) hasn’t been rebooted in at least two months, and it gets a lot of abuse as well as having umpteen external devices connected to it.

I’m using Windows Server 2003, and it is very stable, and even with the abuse I put it through, this was the first time I’d rebooted this week.  It’s a laptop, so I hibernate it.  I rarely reboot, but remember that when there is no rational explanation for a problem. . . reboot.