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I'm debugging a dump file on Windows 2008 R2. I found the error, and it says, "Symbol file could not be found."

What does this mean? Here is an example from the file,

"* ERROR: Symbol file could not be found. Defaulted to export symbols for C:\Windows\system32\VSSAPI.DL"

nobody
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johnny
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    [What are symbol files?](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa363368(v=vs.85).aspx) – Drew Dormann Jun 17 '14 at 16:18
  • How is this a duplicate? I'm not developing it. – johnny Jun 17 '14 at 16:34
  • It's a duplicate in that your posted question _"What does this mean?"_ seems to be answered there. Is it not? – Drew Dormann Jun 17 '14 at 16:38
  • I didn't think so, but I can read again. – johnny Jun 17 '14 at 16:42
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    The short version is that you need a pdb file if you want symbols. – Drew Dormann Jun 17 '14 at 16:47
  • @DrewDormann I figured it out based on your answer. Thanks. – johnny Jun 17 '14 at 18:01
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    A missing symbol file is not "the error" - it did not cause the original crash/dump. This is something that occurs as the debugger analyzes the dump file. – nobody Jun 17 '14 at 18:02
  • It is not a C++ error, it is a debugger informational message, and it is not an error at all. The code is from a third party library that the code you are debugging uses, but that library does not (unsurprisingly) contain full debug symbols. Since you don't have the source for vssapi.dll, and it is likely that that is not where the error is in any case, it is not anything to worry about.. – Clifford Jun 17 '14 at 18:04

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