Visual Studio 2008 C++ - Remote Debugging - “Could not load symbols” only for main project

Question

I am observing a strange behaviour with Visual Studio 2008 when I try to debug an exe remotely.

I have a solution that includes multiple projects. Thereby, each project is compiled into a lib and linked into my main project (the project that starts when hitting the run button). Visual Studio is configured to generate a pdb file that is named exactly like my exe file. Additionally, VS generates a vc90.pdb file for each project.

Now, I can debug my exe locally when I start it from Visual Studio or when I attach Visual Studio to a locally running process of my exe. But when I run my exe on a different machine, VS shows a strange behaviour. In this case, Visual Studio correctly stops at the breakpoints in all projects except for the main project. For each breakpoint in the main project, VS says that it could not load the symbols for the document. However, the modules view shows that VS loaded the correct pdb file.

Does anyone have an idea what is different between a remotely debugged application and a locally attached debugger. Especially because the main project is the only one that causes a problem...

My environment:

• Visual Studio 2008 SP1
• Host machine: Windows 7 64-bit
• Remote machine: Windows XP 32-bit

Answer 1

I figured out that I missed a setting for the main project that was done for all other projects. I had to set "Project -> Properties -> C/C++ -> General -> Debug Information Format" to "Program Database (/Zi)".