I got it to work. Here's how: I downloaded the soap4r package from here: http://dev.ctor.org/download/soap4r-1_5_5.tar.gz I couldn't find a Windows installation, but I was able to unzip this file using Winzip (the built-in Windows unzip doesn't recognize the tar file). This unzips to a soap4r-1_5_5 folder, which I moved to c:\ruby. I then ran the wsdl2ruby.rb file that's in the bin directory of this package, like this: ruby C:\ruby\soap4r-1_5_5\bin\wsdl2ruby.rb --wsdl http://www.xmlme.com/WSShakespeare.asmx?WSDL --type client --force This will create the default.rb, defaultDriver.rb, and ShakespeareClient.rb files in the C:\ directory. When you run it, it does display messages such as "creating class definition", so if it just pauses when you run it, then it's probably not doing anything. That's what happened to me when I ran the wsdl2ruby.rb from the C:\ruby\lib\ruby\1.8\soap directory. Hope this helps anyone else with the same problem.