 <p>Unless you are doing something really special with it, you should not directly read the <code>app.config</code> file, but use <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.configuration.configurationmanager.aspx" rel="nofollow"><code>ConfigurationManager</code></a> class to read from it. If you really want to read it as XML, use <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/it-it/library/875kz807.aspx" rel="nofollow">XmlDocumen.Load()</a> function, but plaease keep in mind that parsing config as an XML file is an unintended way of use.</p>