Active Directory Issues

I have a user control that draws an image on it.
In the constructor I pass the path to the image through.. well so I had though I did. Apparently I was dropping the path and only passing in the file name. I found where that was occurring.

However, I was baffled that the code even worked (displayed my image). I am doing Bitmap bmp = new Bitmap(img); where img is the (was intended to be path also) the image file name.

Everything seems to work under one instance. However, I now need to instances of this code running at the same time. In addition they fetch their images from entirely different paths. This is where the problem was first observed.
I open one instance. All is good. I open a second instance. Still good. I try to go to the next image in my container and I get a bad parameter exception.
I was able to resolve the issue by copying the initial instances images to the secondary instances images directory. This was a blaighten "'Active Directory' must be getting reset".

This control comes from a library and as far as I can remember I did not set any directories to use. That is why I had intended to pass the whole path.

So I guess my question is, does .Net assume directory paths after set? (seems it does since if you open a OpenFileDialog... use it and re-open it will open to where you last had it).
More importantly how do I change it back to what it was (or just change it... I can figure out a pass through method).

Thank you,