Why are no Symbols loaded when remote debugging?

Question

I want to use remote debugging. The program that I want to debug runs on machine b. Visual Studio runs on machine a.

On machine b I have a folder with the following

Answer 1

• On the Tools menu in Visual studio 2010, choose Options.
• In the Options dialog box, open the Debugging node and then click Generals.
• Check Show all settings if needed and locate Enable Just My Code (Managed only)
• Uncheck it and click OK

After you can attach the remote process

Answer 2

I had the same problem while remote debugging, it got resolved with the following steps on VS 2008:

1. you copy the local pdb file along with your binaries
2. Run the same version of msvmon as your application was built for, If your application is built for x86 architecture, you need to run the x86 version of msvmon, even If you are running it on x64 machine. It will give warning when you try to run, but it should run.

Answer 3

Remote debugging in .NET will not work if you don't place the .PDB files into the same directory where the debugged code exists.

If VS still can't find source for debugging, the debugged code and the VS project source are not the same version. The solution is rebuilding and redeploying the project.

Answer 4

1. Add a shared folder on your dev machine that points to the location of the .pdb files
2. Set up an environment variable called _NT_SYMBOL_PATH on the remote machine that points to the shared folder on your dev machine

The remote debugger will now search your dev machine for symbols. No need to copy them over for every build.

See MS Video here.

Start watching 8-9 minutes in. He demonstrates how to setup the remote debugger to load symbols from a drive share on your development machine.

Good luck!

Answer 5

Make sure you copy the .PDB file that is generated with your assembly into the same folder on the remote machine. This will allow the debugger to pickup the debug symbols.

Answer 6

I ran into this issue and the above solutions did not fix it for me. In my case, my VS2010 solution had many projects in it. The project I was trying to remotely debug was not set in my VS2010 solution as the StartUp Project, because my make scripts were not quite right.

I right-clicked on the project within my solution I was trying to debug and selected Set as StartUp Project and then my symbols loaded properly and my breakpoint was hit.