Installing Symbols for Debugging System Call CrashesÂ
To debug a crash that occurs during a call to a system DLL or to a 3rd party library, you will often need system DBG or PDB files, which contain symbols for Windows DLLs, EXEs, and device drivers. You can obtain these symbols from several places:
The Visual Studio CD-ROM contains symbol files for selected versions of Windows.
The OS Support Tools CD-ROM contains symbol files for Windows 2000 and Windows XP.
You can download the latest symbols for your version of Windows from https://www.microsoft.com/whdc/ddk/debugging/symbolpkg.mspx#Windows symbol packages.
You can download symbols automatically from the Microsoft symbol server at http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols or from a local symbols server that is set up on your intranet.
(http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols is for symbol download only. It is not browseable.)
For details, see Using a Symbol Server.
The 3rd party vendor may make the symbols available.