Symbol Server for WinDbg

Today, I used Microsoft's WinDbg debugger to check out a kernel memory dump to see if I can determine which is the last program in memory before my Windows 2003 server (Mystic Hare) crashed. I guessed that it may give me a clue about which is the offending program that is crashing the server.

I haven't used WinDbg in years, and I didn't have the symbol package for Windows 2003 with me. Downloading it is out of the question as my internet connection speed is slow and the package is a few hundred megabytes.

Lucky for me, WinDbg can now download symbols as needed if internet access is available, from what I read in http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/debugstart.mspx

I created the "c:\websymbols" directory to download the symbols to.

1. Start a debugging session.

2. Set the debugger symbol path as:
SRV*c:\websymbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols

Now, I can start the debugging process.

Unfortunately, the debugging didn't go far as the symbols for an external program's .sys file is not available, but it's another story.