title: Debugging HTTP 500 (Internal Server Error) in WCF Service / Staging
body: <p>I have some WCF services which are running great locally; client can consume them and the server is putting data in the DB as expected. The problem is that when I deploy these to a staging machine, all I can see are HTTP 500 errors.</p>
  
  <p><strong>How do I start debugging the problem?</strong> </p>
  
  <p>Given that it's only on staging and not on my local dev machine, I assume it's an IIS configuration problem somewhere. </p>
  
  <p>When I use Fiddler to see what's being sent and what the response is, I can see (as expected) correct request data, and only a 500 as the response -- no further details.</p>
  
  <p>I'm pretty green to WCF and IIS, so it's probably something obvious; I've used <code>aspnet_iisreg</code>, deployed my <code>.svc</code> file and all the built DLLs/files from <code>bin</code>; maybe I missed something.</p>
  
  <p>I looked in the IIS logs, but they're pretty skimpy; no error information there, either (or maybe I'm looking in the wrong place?)</p>
  
  <p>(More important than solving the specific problem is figuring out how to see enough details about errors so I can work through problems myself.)</p>
  
  <p><strong>Edit:</strong> I of course checked the event logs first -- and surprisingly, didn't find any mention of the exceptions. So I assume that the service is <em>at least</em> being invoked, and that something is faulting in the middle.</p>