Where to get the debugger tools
To generate the needed symbols you will need the “Standalone Debugging Tools for Windows (WinDbg)” download here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/hh852365
How to install the debugger tools
The installation of this software is very straight forward, for a minimal installation launch “X64 Debuggers And Tools-x64_en-us.msi” and install the tools with the default settings.
Generating the symbol files for SQL Server
Once installed you will need to generate the symbols, below are two commands one for the SQL Server executable and one for all of the dlls that are in the SQL working directory. Paul Randal @PaulRandal recommends a tip in his blog for using *.dll to gather symbol data on all the dlls in the directory at the expense of time and a small amount of disk space.
“C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\8.1\Debuggers\x64\symchk.exe” sqlservr.exe /s SRV*c:\symbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols
“C:\Program Files\Windows Kits\8.1\Debuggers\x64\symchk.exe” *.dll /s SRV*c:\symbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols
Please feel free to contact me with any questions regarding performance or other SQL Server related issues at: aen@centinosystems.com
The post Tracing call stacks in SQL Server – Installing the Debugging Tools for Windows (WinDbg) on Windows 8.1 and generating debug symbols for SQL Server binaries appeared first on Centino Systems Blog.