Debugging injected DLL with Visual Studio not working

Question

I injected a C++ DLL into a target process like described here . In Visual Studio I want to debug the injected DLL like a "normal" application. I followed this tutorial which seems reasonable but Visual Studio does not break and only says:

The breakpoint will not currently be hit. No symbols have been loaded for this document.

Why? I'm using the default Debug configuration (with debugging symbols I believe). The DLL is injected successfully and executed the DllMain but Visual Studio does not "notice" that even though it is attached to the target process. Is there anything "special" I need to consider configuring in Visual Studio?

Answer 1

As far as I know even if the Dll was built with Debug configuration it won't contain all symbols necessary for debugging. You will still need its symbol file which is generated when building. I assume you didn't build the DLL yourself because otherwise Visual Studio should be able to find the symbol file on your disk by itself. The symbol file has .pdb as extension and usually resides inside the build folder. You need to locate it and tell Visual Studio where to search for it during your debug session. When you have found the symbol file select "Debugging" from Visual Studio's menu bar and follow this path: "Options" => "Debugging" => "Symbols". Hit the button with the green plus sign to add the location where the symbol file resides. Take note that you only need to add the file's location, specifying its name is not required.