How to check if the Microsoft symbol server is available, and contact them if not?

Question

When I use WinDbg command .reload /f /v ntdll.dll to download symbol from microsoft symbol server the request always fails as below:

AddImage: C         


        

Answer 1

As you can see, the server itself is available. It's responding with a HTTP 404 code.

You can check the availability by visiting the root page or the pingme.txt file on Microsoft's server. For the latter, note that you won't see anything in the browser, because it's a 0 byte file.

If symbols are not found, the server is slow or even not responding, I see the wish of contacting Microsoft. The official email address is WinDbgFb@microsoft.com. Another option is to tweet Andy Luhrs. He'll probably have a look at it the next working day (US based), so you'll have to wait over week ends.

There are people lurking around here on SO who have direct contact to Microsoft, e.g. Sasha Goldshtein, Brian Rasmussen, Steve Johnson and others. I guess these will notice an outage and inform Microsoft if needed. I also expect that Microsoft employees are using the symbol server themselves, so they'll probably notice that before you could report it.

Answer 2

The official email address for reporting missing symbols is windbgfb@microsoft.com, on this page. Symbols for newly patched files are usually available within 1 week after each Patch Tuesday, so you may want to wait a few days before contacting them if the files are recently updated.

By the way, you should use https://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols. [1]

[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/DxTechArts/debugging-with-symbols#using-the-microsoft-symbol-server