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Updated: 21.08.2005
Symbol server access is one of the most useful features of VS.NET debugger.
It is very convenient to be able to automatically download symbols that match
the current system with all hotfixes (or an end-user system, if we want to debug
a crash dump). But there is a small issue - some modules do not have their symbols
on the public symbol server. But debugger does not know about it, and therefore
every time we start the debugging session, the debugger contacts the symbol server
and tries to download symbols for the modules - without success. As a result,
startup time of the debugging session can increase significantly, especially
for applications that use lots of 3rd party components, whose symbols cannot be
on Microsoft symbol server by definition.
Fortunately, there is a solution - we can tell the debugger that some modules
should be excluded from symbol server search.
Here is how to do it:
1. Upgrade symsrv.dll.
This small DLL is responsible for symbol server access. VS.NET distribution
contains a relatively old version of this DLL, which does not support symbol
server exclusion list. We should upgrade it with a newer version, which is
supplied with Debugging
Tools for Windows (version 6.5 is the latest at the time of this writing).
After we have downloaded and installed Debugging Tools, symsrv.dll should be
copied from its installation directory to <VSInstallDir>\Common7\IDE
directory.
2. Specify the exclusion list in symsrv.ini file.
This file should be created in <VSInstallDir>\Common7\IDE directory
(the directory where symsrv.dll is located).
[exclusions] section of this file should contain the list of files to be excluded
from the symbol server search. Wildcards are supported, and I prefer to replace all
file extensions with * wildcard to make sure that all possible debug information
file formats are excluded.
Here is a sample symsrv.ini file that asks the debugger to exclude msxml4.dll
and shlwapi.dll from symbol server search:
;start of symsrv.ini
[exclusions]
msxml4.*
shlwapi.*
;end of symsrv.ini
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