I have a class that is derived from a GUI framework class and it seems like the serialization library will attempt to serialize the parent class but I don't own that classes code. I get an error "'GUIWidget::GUIWidget' : cannot access private member declared in class 'GUIWidget'". I do not know why it is looking in the parent class since I do not do anything with the base_object. Is there a way to get around this issue? I am doing somethine wrong? Here is the code, #include <boost/archive/tmpdir.hpp> #include <boost/archive/text_wiarchive.hpp> #include <boost/archive/text_woarchive.hpp> #include <boost/serialization/vector.hpp> #include <fstream> #include <iostream> namespace boost { namespace serialization { class access; } } class MyClass: public GUIWidget { public: MyClass(); ~MyClass(); private: std::vector<LSLogEntry> m_logEntryList; // LSLogEntry has wstring members. friend class boost::serialization::access; // When the class Archive corresponds to an output archive, the // & operator is defined similar to <<. Likewise, when the class Archive // is a type of input archive the & operator is defined similar to >>. template<class Archive> void serialize(Archive & ar, const unsigned int version) { ar & m_logEntryList; } }; // free functions void save(const MyClass& eftw, const char * filename) { std::string fullPath(boost::archive::tmpdir()); fullPath += filename; // save the schedule try { // make an archive std::wofstream ofs(fullPath.c_str()); boost::archive::text_woarchive oa(ofs); oa << eftw; } catch (boost::archive::archive_exception e) { wcout << e.what(); } } void load(MyClass& eftw, const char * filename) { std::string fullPath(boost::archive::tmpdir()); fullPath += filename; // Restore the data try { // open the archive std::wifstream ifs(fullPath.c_str()); boost::archive::text_wiarchive ia(ifs); // restore from the archive ia >> eftw; } catch (boost::archive::archive_exception e) { wcout << e.what(); } } Thanks, David