How to disable PDB load?

IDA General
1

hi

i looked into IDA options but i couldn’t find pdb settings. every time i attach to my target, IDA tries loading PDB files for dll; it makes UI nonresponsive and clicking the cancel takes a minute or two.
how can i disable it or tell IDA to only load specific pdb files.

2

Hello,

You probably checked “don’t ask again” at some point when IDA was prompting you whether to load the PDB. Please see Igor’s tip of the week #78: Auto-hidden messages – Hex Rays

3

Additionally, you can look for pdb.cfg, for PDB-specific configuration.

Here is a snippet taken from that file:

// PDB information provider
#define PDB_PROVIDER_MSDIA  1   // use MSDIA local/remote provider
#define PDB_PROVIDER_PDBIDA 2   // use PDBIDA provider
//PDB_PROVIDER = PDB_PROVIDER_PDBIDA

// it is possible to specify the desired provider in the command line:
//      ida -Opdb:off input_file
//      ida -Opdb:msdia input_file
//      ida -Opdb:pdbida input_file
4

i did reset the hidden messages, ida still doesn’t ask anything; goes on loading the PDBs.
i also looked at pdb.cfg file but i don’t know what exactly to change; should i comment out every line?

this is what i mean:

pdb
pdb634×234 10.5 KB

5

Thank you for the screenshot. This is debug time symbol loading which is different from the load time which I thought you meant originally. IIRC there is a switch in debug options but I’m not sure if it is honored by windbg since it has its own internal logic.

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6

so i should try to find a solution in WinDGB documetation?

7

I think .symopt could help. For example, I would try disabling SYMOPT_DEFERRED_LOADS so that dbgeng doesn’t try to download PDBs in background.

1 Like