SoapFormatter - throwing exception when deserializing using MemoryStream.

Hi I have the following code:

System.Collections.Hashtable hs = new Hashtable();
hs.Add("Test1", "Data1");
hs.Add("Test2", "Data2");

MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream();
 
SoapFormatter formatter = new SoapFormatter();
formatter.Serialize(ms, hs);

Hashtable tempHs = (Hashtable) formatter.Deserialize(ms);

The problem is that it keeps throwing an XMLException with the message : The root element is missing. Whenever i try to deserialize the data.

However, if i used exactly the same code but replace the MemoryStream with a FileStream it works fine.. THe reason I am using the memoryStream is that i dont need to write the files to disk. I just want to retrieve the byte[] .. Is there an alternative method for me to use?

Thanks