Sometimes you get stuck with a broken or no dump at all. You know what you’re looking for but WinDBG just keeps refusing to load symbols as you continue to beg for mercy from the all knowing deities of Debugging Tools for Windows. You know what PDB you’re looking for but it just wouldn’t load. The only thing you do know is that you don’t want to go digging for that specific version of your product in the bug report and build a whole setup for it just so you can get the PDB. For those special times, some WinDBG coercion goes a long way.
To download the PDB create a comma separated manifest file with 3 columns for each row. The columns are the requested PDB name, its GUID plus age for a total of 33 characters and the number 1. Finally call symchk and pass the path to the manifest file with the /im command line switch. Use the /v command line switch to get the download path of the PDB.
To demonstrate I’ll use everyone’s favorite debugging sample process.
C:\>echo calc.pdb,E95BB5E08CE640A09C3DBF3DFA3ABCB42,1 > manifest
C:\>symchk /v /im manifest
[...]
SYMSRV: Get File Path: /download/symbols/calc.pdb/E95BB5E08CE640A09C3DBF3DFA3ABCB42/calc.pdb
[...]
DBGHELP: C:\ProgramData\dbg\sym\calc.pdb\E95BB5E08CE640A09C3DBF3DFA3ABCB42\calc.pdb - OK
SYMCHK: FAILED files = 0
SYMCHK: PASSED + IGNORED files = 1
To force load the PDB you need to update the PDB path, turn SYMOPT_LOAD_ANYTHING on, and use the .reload command with /f to force and /i to ignore any so called mismatches.
kd> .sympath C:\ProgramData\dbg\sym\calc.pdb\E95BB5E08CE640A09C3DBF3DFA3ABCB42
kd> .symopt+0x40
kd> .reload /f /i calc.exe=0x00400000
You should now have access to all the data in the PDB file and stack traces should start making sense.
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