| title | description | keywords | ms.date | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Windows Symbol Packages for Debugging |
Learn about Windows symbol packages, which are used for debugging, and how to get Windows symbols with the Microsoft public symbol server. |
|
12/21/2023 |
Symbol files make it easier to debug your code. The easiest way to get Windows symbols is to use the Microsoft public symbol server. The symbol server makes symbols available to your debugging tools as needed. After a symbol file is downloaded from the symbol server, it's cached on the local computer for quick access.
Important
We no longer publish the offline symbol packages for Windows.
With the cadence that we release updates for Windows, the Windows debugging symbols we publish via the packages on this page are quickly made out of date. We've made significant improvements to the online Microsoft public symbol server by transitioning this to an Azure-based symbol store. Symbols for all Windows versions and updates are available there. You can find more information in this blog entry.
For information on how to retrieve symbols for a machine that's not connected to the Internet, see Using a manifest file with SymChk.
To learn more about using symbols and debugging, see Symbols and symbol files.
For help with debugging issues, see Debugging resources.
We're interested in your feedback about symbols. Mail suggestions or bug reports to windbgfb@microsoft.com. Technical support isn't available from this address, but your feedback will help us to plan future changes for symbols and will make them more useful to you in the future.