Storing your Debug Symbols

Here is simple batch file to store symbols of released versions of your product. Symstore.exe is used from Debugging Tools. I use this regularly to save debugging symbols of our product locally in structured manner.

set BUILDNUM=%1

“C:\Program Files\Debugging Tools for Windows\symstore.exe” add /r /f “<path-to-your-prod-symbols-in-the-build>\*.pdb” /s \\<path-to-symbol-store-folder> /t “My Product Name” /v “Build %BUILDNUM%”

Developers can then append path to existing symbols path:

SRV*C:\WinSymbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols;<path-to-your-symbol-store-folder>

If some product is buggy and you don’t want symbols of it anymore, you can use Symstore to remove by using ID. This ID can be found in “<path-to-your-symbol-store-folder>00Admin” folder.  “History.txt” in this location will also show the date when storing is done and corresponding ID.

Advantage using symstore is, needless to say, you don’t have to worry about looking for right symbols when debugging your product. WinDbg resolves it for you