Loading WCF Service from different folder in WCF Windows host

Question

I want to load WCF service dll from WCF Windows host.EXE file. But WCf Service.dll is stored in some other folder.

Folder structure:

\@root\Service\WCFService.dll (this is service)
\@root\Host\WCFHost.exe (this is host exe)
\@root\Host\WCFHost.exe.config (this is host exe configuration)

<services>
   <service name="XXX.Service">
      <endpoint address="http" binding="basicHttpBinding" contract="XXX.IService" />
      <endpoint address="mex" binding="mexHttpBinding" contract="IMetadataExchange" />
      <host>
         <baseAddresses>
            <add baseAddress="http://localhost:8035/Service" />
         </baseAddresses>
      </host>
   </service>
<services>

When I start my windows service, I am getting the following error:

Service cannot be started. System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly 'XXX.Service, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified. File name: 'XXX.Service, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null'.

Thanks in Advance, Nizam

Answer 1

Assuming XXX in your code sample is the fully qualified namespace to the service implementation, then here are some suggestions:

• A dependency of WCFService.dll is not present in the same directory as the exe or the GAC.
• You are producing a signed version of the host.exe which is trying to load an unsigned version of WCFService.dll
• ???