Still problem with file reading

Hi, I wrote a while back saying of my problem... I tried to read a file I tried in a couple of ways and i posted a question on this newsgroup and a couple of people helped me (btw, thank you for help) and they suggested a few other ways I tried all possible ways and i could read a file it says: Failed to open stream! No such file or directory exists while im 100% sure the file exists path of the file: C:\Program Files\XAMPP\xampp\htdocs\test_folder\test1.txt htdocs is apache's root directory I tried setting the file there C:\Program Files\XAMPP\xampp\htdocs but still the same I have tried the URL approach the above aproach the plain "test1.txt" aproach as to relative to the DOCUMENT_ROOT i have tried everything but still it doesn't work I tried to use echo is_readable and file_exists and it returned negative, that the file does not exists but i say again the file does exist I didn't spelled it wrong I have checked a hundred times but always the same answer! PLEASE HELP, I'm learning PHP by a book and I have a whole section about file reading,writing... And I dont want to skip any part of the book! :) If you need more info, I'll be happy to answer any question. THANK YOU in advance!