Resolving “Symbol file could not be found”
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On one of my debugging workstations I couldn’t analyze kernel and complete memory dumps from Windows 2003 Server R02. I was always getting this message:
*** ERROR: Symbol file could not be found. Defaulted to export symbols for ntkrnlmp.exe -
An attempt to reload and overwrite PDB files using .reload /o /f command didn’t resolve the issue but the following WinDbg command helped:
1: kd> !sym noisy
noisy mode - symbol prompts on
Reloading symbol files showed that default symbol path contained corrupt ntkrnlmp.pdb:
1: kd> .reload
DBGHELP: C:\Program Files\Debugging Tools for Windows\sym\ntkrnlmp.pdb\A91CA63E49A840F4A50509F90ADE10D52\ntkrnlmp.pdb - E_PDB_CORRUPT
DBGHELP: ntkrnlmp.pdb - file not found
*** ERROR: Symbol file could not be found. Defaulted to export symbols for ntkrnlmp.exe -
DBGHELP: nt - export symbol
Deleting it and reloading symbols again showed problems with the file downloaded from MS symbol server too:
1: kd> .reload
SYMSRV: c:\symdownstream\ntkrnlmp.pdb\A91CA63E49A840F4A50509F90ADE10D52\ntkrnlmp.pd_
The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable.
DBGHELP: ntkrnlmp.pdb - file not found
*** ERROR: Symbol file could not be found. Defaulted to export symbols for ntkrnlmp.exe -
DBGHELP: nt - export symbols
Removing the folder and reloading symbols resolved the problem:
1: kd> .reload
DBGHELP: nt - public symbols
c:\symdownstream\ntkrnlmp.pdb\A91CA63E49A840F4A50509F90ADE10D52\ntkrnlmp.pdb
Now it was time to switch noisy mode off:
1: kd> !sym quiet
quiet mode - symbol prompts on
- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -
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