Windows Symbol Support

Downloading Symbols Automatically With a Debugger

You can use a debugger such as Visual Studio or WindDbg to automatically download symbol files (PDBs) to your specified cache folder.

Downloading Symbols Manually

You can also download the PDB files for a DLL or EXE manually using the SymChk.exe tool. You can get symchk.exe by installing the Debugging Tools for Windows. You can find the tool in the default install location at C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\Debuggers\x64\symchk.exe for the 64-bit application or C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\Debuggers\x86\symchk.exe for the 32-bit application.

An example on how to download the public symbols for the kernel32.dll into the directory C:\SymbolCache:

symchk C:\Windows\System32\kernel32.dll /s srv*C:\SymbolCache\*https://msdl.microsoft.com/downloads/symbols /v

To download symbols for an entire directory recursively, you can run:

symchk /r C:\Windows\System32 /s srv*C:\SymbolCache\*https://msdl.microsoft.com/downloads/symbols

The /v (verbose output mode) switch gives you more information about the downloaded file.

Suggested Readings and References

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/debugger/using-symchk
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/debugger/symchk-command-line-options
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/dxtecharts/debugging-with-symbols