A different take on this question, which might help someone:
I came here because I was debugging in Visual Studio on Windows, and I got confused about all this /
vs \\
discussion (it really should not matter in most cases).
For me, the problem was: the "current directory" was not set to what I wanted in Visual Studio. It defaults to the directory of the executable (depending on how you set up your project).
Change it via: Right-click the solution -> Properties -> Working Directory
I only mention it because the question seems Windows-centric, which generally also means VisualStudio-centric, which tells me this hint might be relevant (: