I'm actually using this line on a project I'm working on right now.

Works if i move it to another directory or to another machine.

Application.StartupPath & "\filename.extension"

Not against literals just have never used them before to be honest.

I'll look into them for sure ;-) never hurts to know about it, but for this project I'll just roll with what I have. It's not a super crazy important program, it's mainly for a work around for about 3-4 weeks until the FTP sources are not needed any longer.

Thanks for your help guys always a treat ;-)

sure ... it's just in my main_load

    Private Sub main_Load(sender As Object, e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.Load
        Try
            ' pull the current settings file
            Dim objStreamReader As New StreamReader(Application.StartupPath & "\sm.xml")
            Dim x As New XmlSerializer(GetType(myFTP))
            siteManager = x.Deserialize(objStreamReader)
            objStreamReader.Close()

            For Each aConfig In siteManager.configs
                For Each aServer As Server In aConfig.servers
                    profileList.Items.Add(aServer.Name)
                Next
            Next
        Catch ex As Exception
            MsgBox(ex.ToString)
        End Try
    End Sub

I have not gotten to the point of testing how everything looks when i serialize it back to an XML.

ugly ugly ugly ... lol

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?>
<myFTP>
    <Servers>
        <Server>
            <Name>FTP Host 1</name>
            <Host>ftp1.host.com</Host>
            <Port>21</Port>
            <User>ftpuser</User>
            <Pass>ftppass</Pass>
            FTP Host 1
        </Server>
      <Server>
            <Name>FTP Host 2</name>
            <Host>ftp2.host.com</Host>
            <Port>21</Port>
            <User>ftpuser</User>
            <Pass>ftppass</Pass>
            FTP Host 2
      </Server>
    </Servers>
  <Servers></Servers>
</myFTP>

<Serializable()> _
<XmlRoot("myFTP")> _
Public Class myFTP
    <XmlElement("Servers")> _
    Public configs As List(Of Servers)
End Class

Public Class Servers
    <XmlElement("Server")> _
    Public servers As List(Of Server)
End Class

For Each aConfig In siteManager.configs
                For Each aServer As Server In aConfig.servers
                    profileList.Items.Add(aServer.Name)
                Next
            Next

works just not as clean as I would like to do it ... still can't figure out how to read that text value of the node <server>, if it's even possible. I really don't need it but would prefer to know how to deal with it.

Meh, I didn't even realize I left the module declaration there thanks for that.

<Serializable()> _
<XmlRoot("myFTP")> _
Public Class myFTP
    Public servers As List(Of Server)
End Class

The downside is now it doesn't iterate the server nodes under servers. So the collection is empty.

It's only iterating the Servers nodes, that's why I had an extra class as Servers before, which i did because it made it iterate both the servers parent node and the server chil nodes under the servers.

Hmmm .....