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Asked: 2026-05-10T17:02:23+00:00

I’ve never had to do IPC on Windows before. I’m developing a pair of

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I’ve never had to do IPC on Windows before. I’m developing a pair of programs, a standard GUI/CLI app, and a windows service. The app has to tell the service what to do. So, assuming the communication is local only, what would be the best communication method for these two processes?
By best I mean more robust and less error prone, not the best performance nor the easiest to code.

Note I’m asking about what to use, a standard TCP socket, named pipes, or some other means of communication only.

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1 Answer

  1. IPC in .Net can be achieved using:

    WCF

    using named pipes requires .Net 3.0 and above.

    Code example

    Remoting

    The original IPC framework released with .Net 1.0. I believe remoting is no longer being actively developed, and you are encouraged to use WCF instead

    Code example

    Inter-process communication via Remoting – uses a tcp channel

    Resources

    Win32 RPC using csharptest-net RpcLibrary

    I came across a project recently that has wrapped the Win32 RPC library and created a .net class library that can be used for local and remote RPC

    Project home page: http://csharptest.net/projects/rpclibrary/

    MSDN references:

    Also has a google protocol buffers rpc client that runs on top of the library: https://code.google.com/p/protobuf-csharp-rpc/

    WM_COPYDATA

    For completeness it’s also possible to use the WIN32 method with the WM_COPYDATA message. I’ve used this method before in .Net 1.1 to create a single instance application opening multiple files from windows explorer.

    Resources

    Sockets

    Using a custom protocol (harder)

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