WCF Service Reference - Getting “XmlException: Name cannot begin with the '<' character, hexadecimal value 0x3C” on Client Side

Question

I have a smart client application communicating with its server via WCF. Data is created on the client and then sent over the service to be persisted. The server and client use

Answer 1

A similar error tripped me up, but it turned out my config file (actually a clientconfig file for silverlight) contained the following

   <
       
       
   

So sometimes messages about extra < characters should be taken literally!