WinDbg !heap command not working on Windows Azure

Question

I an trying to inspect the unmanaged heap on a Windows Azure Web Role using WinDBG. When running "!heap -s", I am getting the "Invalid type information" error, same as outlined in this question: WinDbg !heap command not working due to missing symbols.

However, when trying to reload the symbols and setting symbol loading to "noisy", I see this:

SYMSRV: http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols/ntdll.pdb/9D7437C73CAF42919078F59C14F1BB462/ntdll.pdb not found

So AFAIK, there are no symbols for this particular version of ntdll.

Is there any workaround that would enable me to be able to see the unmanaged heap? My WaIISHost.exe process is consuming 1.5GB of RAM and the managed heap is tiny (50MB).

Answer 1

Sometimes the Windows symbols are actually missing on Microsoft's symbol servers - the best indication is the "not found" error from the Symbol Server when noisy loading is set.

In this case, one should contact the public Windbg External Feedback alias - windbgfb@microsoft.com. I did this in my case (for ntdll.dll version is 6.1.7601.18241) and Microsoft resolved the problem in about a week's time.