The following can be very useful when debugging a service or any other .NET app

At an appropriate point in your code you add:

if ( !System.Diagnostics.Debugger.IsAttached )
{
System.Diagnostics.Debugger.Launch();
System.Diagnostics.Debugger.Break();
}

It will search for a suitable debugger which would include the IDE that you have open on your code.

This site details the .NET Namespaces in detail:

dot net 247

It links to newsgroup articles explaining the details required.

Try using:

System.Diagnostics.Process.Start

This is much cleaner than the PInvoke version of:

[DllImport(“shell32.dll”)]
public static extern int ShellExecute(IntPtr hWnd,
            string lpszOp, string lpszFile,
            string lpszParams, string lpszDir,int FsShowCmd);

static void Main(string[] args)
{
int hWnd;
long noth;

ShellExecute(0, “OPEN”, @”D:\WINNT\NOTEPAD.EXE”,
null, null, 0);

}

Ghengis  is a collection of add on classes for .NET

It aims to add those bits that Microsoft forgot to put in the framework.

System.Net contains the ever useful WebClient class.

This allows code such as:

System.Net.WebClient wc = new System.Net.WebClient();
byte[] myDataBuffer = wc.DownloadData(url);
string download = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetString(myDataBuffer);

This allows the text at a given url to be extracted.
Welcome to your own web spider.