Debugging service with new redirected strong name assemblies

Question

We found a problem with third party assemblies which are strongly named and are used in our windows service.

On the client machine, with the already installed release build I dropped in the new assemblies and in the application config file I redirected the services to load the new assemblies. My service starts but does not seem to do anything (it should start logging as soon as it starts).

I was wondering if on my development machine I can run my application in Debug and some how use the new assemblies to try to work out where the service is failing?

JD

Answer 1

A couple of things you can try:

• To debug the service, try inserting a "System.Diagnostics.Debugger.Break()" in the first line of your OnStart() method

• If you can't change the code, increase the Fusion logging level and then run the service again. Your assembly error should be logged with more details in the Event Viewer. Some good instuctions here: How to enable assembly bind failure logging (Fusion) in .NET