Compress windows pdb symbol files stops the debugger from loading them
debugging, windbg
Solution
After looking at the docs: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms681416%28v=vs.85%29.aspx
compressed symbols files are supported so long as you use the compress.exe tool that is distributed with the resource kit.
The compressed files can be located on a network resource and are copied and decompressed when loaded, this means that you must specify a local symbol store where it will be copied to and decompressed and this must be the first entry because if you specify paths in a different order then it may not be able to copy and decompress it so as you've found it works if you specify the local path first.
In your case the following worked: `srv*C:\localSymbols*<mysymbolserver>;`
Problem
I wrote a script to host a symbol server. I do not wish to use symstore.exe. What I do is :- Get the GUID of the PDB and the age. concatenate both and put my pdb file inside a folder named by the resulting string. My symbol server/share works fine. Now, To implement compression, I use the compress tool from Microsoft, but the symbols stop being loaded by windbg. Can anyone help me out with it? From what I understand, compressing the pdb and renaming it to *.pd_ should work fine.