Symbols for microsoft debugger

During debugging, the Modules window shows the code modules the debugger is treating as user code, or My Code, and their symbol loading status. You can also monitor symbol loading status, load symbols, and change symbol options in the Modules window.

There are several ways for the debugger to break into code that does not have symbol or source files available:. When this happens, the debugger displays the No Symbols Loaded or No Source Loaded pages to help you find and load the necessary symbols or source. To use the No Symbols Loaded document page to help find and load missing symbols:.

If the debugger finds the. Otherwise, it displays a No Source Loaded page that describes the issue, with links to actions that might resolve the issue. You can specify the locations the debugger searches for source files, and exclude specific files from the search.

Under Directories containing source code , type or select source code locations to search. Use the New Line icon to add more locations, the Up and Down arrow icons to reorder them, or the X icon to delete them.

The debugger searches only the specified directory. You must add entries for any subdirectories that you want to search. Under Do not look for these source files , type the names of source files to exclude from search.

Understand symbol files and Visual Studio symbol settings. NET remote symbol loading changes in Visual Studio and Skip to main content. This browser is no longer supported.

Download Microsoft Edge More info. Contents Exit focus mode. Specify symbol. Is this page helpful? Please rate your experience Yes No. Any additional feedback? Tip To debug code outside your project source code, such as Windows code or third-party code your project calls, you must specify the location of the external code's.

Note When debugging managed code on a remote device, all symbol files must be located either on the local machine, or in a location specified in the debugger options. Microsoft public symbol server. Public and Private Symbols. Firewalls and Proxy Servers. Symbol Syntax and Symbol Matching.

Custom Symbol Stores and Symbol Servers. Symbol Problems While Debugging. If you simply want to configure your debugger to access symbols for your own programs and for Windows, you may find it quicker to read the less-detailed introductory topics Symbol Path and Microsoft public symbol server.

Please rate your experience Yes No. Any additional feedback? Submit and view feedback for This product This page. View all page feedback. In this article. In this case, there is a small delay when you start a debugging session. To avoid even this small delay, you can run the debugger once, to cache all the symbols locally from the Microsoft symbol server. Unless the executable files change, checks for executable files that do not have symbols will not require a query over the Internet, because you have local cached copies of all the symbols that you need from the Microsoft symbol server.

If you have set up your debugger correctly, it automatically loads any symbols that it requires from your local cache or from a symbol server. If you would like to get the symbols for just a single executable, or for a folder of executables, you can use symchk. The symchk tool has many other uses. Setting up a symbol server on your own local network is as simple as creating a file share on a server and giving users full permissions to access the share, to create files and folders.

This share should be created on a server operating system, such as Windows Server , so that the number of people who can access the share simultaneously is not limited. This is typically all that is involved in setting up and using either your own symbol server, or the Microsoft symbol server. To add, delete or edit files on a symbol server share, use the symstore. This tool is part of the Microsoft Debugging Tools for Windows package. Full documentation on symbol servers, the symstore tool, and indexing symbols is included in the Debugging Tools for Windows package.

You may want to add symbols directly to your own symbol server, as part of a build process, or to make symbols available to your whole team for third-party libraries or tools. The process of adding a symbol to a symbol server file share is called indexing symbols. There are two common ways to index symbols. A symbol file can be copied to the symbol server.

Or, a pointer to the location of the symbol can be copied to the symbol server. If you have an archive folder that contains your old builds, you may want to index pointers to the PDB files that are already on the share, instead of duplicating symbols.

Because symbols can sometimes be tens of megabytes in size, it's a good idea to plan ahead for how much space you may require to archive all the builds of your project throughout development. If you index only pointers to symbols, you may have problems if you remove old builds, or change the name of a file share.

This can be useful when performing administrative tasks on the symbols. Skip to main content. This browser is no longer supported. Download Microsoft Edge More info. Contents Exit focus mode. Is this page helpful?

Please rate your experience Yes No. Any additional feedback? In this article.