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

While the above answers are correct, I ran into instances where the PDBs that were built with assembly being debugged were in place at the remote location, and were not being picked up. If you are using TFS or another build mechanism that supports publishing your debug symbols, I would recommend doing it. Then in Visual Studio Options>Debugging>Symbols you can add that location to the Symbol Servers option to load those symbols anytime they are found to match.

This has allowed me debug darned near anything that is running that I have written even if it is a dynamically called assembly (something that I could not get to work for the life of me when only publishing symbols with the assembly). Make use of this very handy feature!

Answer 2

According to documentation, for managed (I tried attaching to a managed windows service (built against .net 4.5) on remote machine with visual studio 2012) the symbols should be on the remote machine.

So, I just kept symbols (make sure they match the modules/assemblies of the application on remote machine) on remote machine, share it and referred to it via symbol settings from local system (where vs is running).

Note: the service and symbols need not be on same directory as its working for me with 2k12 + .net 4.5 windows service.

for details:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bt727f1t(v=vs.100).aspx

Excerpt from the link:

Locating Symbol (.pdb) Files

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Symbol files contain the debugging information for compiled executables. The symbol files of the application to be debugged must be the files that were created when the application executables were compiled. The symbol files must also be located where the debugger can find them.

•The symbol files for native applications must be located on the Visual Studio host computer.

•The symbol files for managed applications must be located on the remote computer.

•The symbol files for mixed (managed and native) applications must be located on both the Visual Studio host computer and the remote computer.

Regards!