title: How to start a WCF service outside Visual Studio?
body: <p>I just created a WCF service with <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms734712.aspx" rel="nofollow noreferrer">this MSDN tutorial</a>.</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>from within Visual studio I can CTRL-F5 the service so it is running</li>
  <li>then I can start my Console Application Client and consume the service no problem</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Now I want to start my service OUTSIDE visual studio and have various clients consume it.</p>
  
  <p>But when I go to the command line and execute this file ../bin/Debug/testService.exe, I get an exception: "<strong>Input has the wrong format</strong>". </p>
  
  <p>I get the same error when I publish the service and start the published .exe file.</p>
  
  <p>What am I missing here? Do I need to send some kind of parameter that Visual Studio is sending to make it run? </p>
  
  <p>How can I run my WCF service externally outside Visual Studio?</p>