WinDbg takes extremely long time to loading symbols; is searching every directory in large network UNC symbol store

Question

I\'ve spent several days trying to speed up loading of symbols when debugging crash dumps using WinDbg, and I\'m unable to get past a particular problem.

The issue is t

Answer 1

Shouldn't that be:

.sympath cache*C:\SymbolCache1;SRV*\\our.corp\SymbolStore;SRV*C:\SymbolCache2*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols  

That is, by listing \\our.corp\SymbolStore without SRV* you are telling dbghelp to look in this unstructured directory for symbols. If you use the SRV* syntax then you are telling dbghelp to get symsrv to look in that directory in a very specific and structured way.

symsrv.dll can search Microsoft's symbol server efficiently, and it can search yours efficiently, if you tell it to do so with SRV*.