Send string commands or bytes to a Windows Service? (When running)

Question

Is there any way to give string or byte array commands to a Windows Service? (When running)

Answer 1

I will sometimes host a WCF service within a Windows service for the purpose of controlling the behavior of the service at runtime.

If you really just want to send raw data to the service and you don't want to deal with configuring a WCF service (which really isn't that difficult to do, by the way), you could probably accomplish that using Named Pipes or by listening for socket connections on some port.