Access to file used in picturebox

Question

I've got a form in a MDI project that contains a picturebox control. I populate the control like this...

newimage = Image.FromFile("c:\temp.bmp")
Me.PictureBox1.Image = newimage

I need to later kill the file "c:\temp.bmp", but even after executing the dispose method of the picturebox control I get the error "The process cannot access the file 'c:\temp.bmp' because it is being used by another process." What am I missing here?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Cam

Cam · Answer

Beautiful Scott! I actually was going down that road initially as the dll that generated the temp file had a function that wrote to file stream but it had compatability problems with VB filenumber it required a filehandle. Thanks very much.

Scott Lysle · Answer

Open it from a memory stream rather than from the file; once you dispose of the memory stream and can delete the source file at will (here is an example with a form picturebox and a button the image is loaded at form load the button click event deletes the file after setting the picturebox image to nothing (which is not required you can leave the image showing and still delete the image file): Imports System.IO Public Class Form1 Private Sub Form1_Load( ByVal sender As System.Object ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase .Load Try Dim fsImage As System.IO.FileStream = Nothing fsImage = System.IO.File.Open( c:/Temp/junk.bmp  FileMode.Open FileAccess.Read) Dim bArrImage(fsImage.Length) As Byte fsImage.Read(bArrImage 0 Convert.ToInt32(fsImage.Length)) fsImage.Close() Dim ms As New MemoryStream(bArrImage) PictureBox1.Image = Image.FromStream(ms) ms.Dispose() Catch ex As IOException MessageBox.Show(ex.Message Error Opening Image ) Catch ex As Exception MessageBox.Show(ex.Message Error Opening Image ) End Try End Sub ' clear the picturebox and delete the source image Private Sub Button1_Click( ByVal sender As System.Object ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click Try ' you don't have to clear the image first but if you 'want to just set the image to nothing PictureBox1.Image = Nothing ' delete the source file used to ' populate the picture box image System.IO.File.Delete( c:/Temp/junk.bmp ) ' disable the button after the image ' is gone Button1.Enabled = False Catch ex As IOException MessageBox.Show(ex.Message Error Disposing of Image ) Catch ex As Exception MessageBox.Show(ex.Message Error Disposing of Image ) End Try End Sub End Class