Minidump symbols won't load in release mode

Question

I'm trying to debug minidumps using VS 2010.

While minidumps that get generated by my application that was built in "Debug mode" work OK and can be properly debugged, minidumps that were generated by application built in "Release mode" don't work. By that I mean that I get greeted with "No Source Available" while debugging a minidump because there's supposedly something wrong with the symbols.

"Symbol Status" in "Modules" window shows: "No native symbols in symbol file."

If I load symbols from Symbol Path I get "A matching symbol file was not found in this folder". Of course that's untrue (I knew it all along, but just in case I've checked if they truly match with ChkMatch.exe and they do).

I've managed to figure out exactly which build switches make minidumps unusable - those are "Optimize Code" and "Debug Info". The only way to make minidumps "work" is by unchecking "Optimize Code" and using "full" Debug Info (no, pdb-only doesn't work). Both of those have a performance hit and I'd really like to avoid using this kind of build setup for release version of my application.

Does anyone have any idea why those two switches render minidumps unsuable?

Thanks.

Answer 1

After a lot of trial and error I've finally managed to figure out what the problem was. I'm posting this for anyone else that encountered the same issue.

The solution is to uncheck "Enable Just My Code" in Tools/Options/Debugging/General. Be sure to stop debugging and then start again for that change to take effect.