Visual Studio doesn't cache Microsoft Symbol Server cache misses?

Question

I'm using the Microsoft Symbol Server with Visual Studio 2008 and it's working pretty well. Unfortunately, when the public symbol server doesn't contain the symbols, it takes a while to timeout, and Visual Studio attempts to reload the same missing symbols every time that I start my project for debugging.

Is there any way that I can get (or trick) Visual Studio into remembering the "misses" and not to bother again for a while?

Vaquero

Answer 1

See this post
But it seems you can also control symbols loading with symsrv.ini
(I guess the ini file should go under ...\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE folder)

Update: Just found this link. Using the registry is better than the ini file approach.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Symbol Server\Exclusions]
"notepad.pdb"=""
"ora*.*"=""

Santo

What does it mean if I don't have the "Symbol Server" folder in the registry? – Doubleheader

Answer 2

You can do this through the VS IDE (I've done this in 2005, 2010 and 2012).

Method 1 (Recommended):

• Open the "Modules" window (Debug->Windows->Modules)
• Sort the list by "Symbol Status"
• Find & select the group of modules with the status "Cannot find..."
• Right click and select "Automatic Symbol Load Settings -> Always Load Manually"

Method 2:

• Open "Tools->Options" and navigate to "Debugging->Symbols"
• Click "Specify excluded modules" under the 1st radio button (which should be selected)
• Add the module names to the list and click OK

Illuminant

note: the "Modules" window is only available when debugging (VS2012 at least) – Determiner

And, to manually specify the symbols, choose "Load Symbols" from the context menu of the module in question. – Daly

In VS2019 there is only a toggle for Always Load Automatically. Start a new desktop project with this setting and debug it, and the symbols start downloading as if there was no local symbol cache, which is assuredly still here, and used by another project, which is not open in another window (as if that should make any difference). However there is another workaround! – Brawny