title: How can I debug a dump file for an ASPNET worker process in Visual Studio 2010?
body: <p>I've run into a particularly nasty bug where an ASP.NET website attempts to make a call to a WCF service method that sends IIS into a death spiral...that ultimately brings down the associated app pool.  It never gets to our log4net code that outputs unhandled exceptions.</p>
  
  <p>I was watching w3wp.exe processes spin up and die, so I figured I'd take a dump file on termination using <a href="http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/dd996900.aspx" rel="nofollow noreferrer">ProcDump from SysInternals</a> using the following command:</p>
  
  <pre><code>procdump -e -t -ma &lt;PID&gt; aspnet.dmp
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This gets me a minidump file, which I can open up in VS2010, and it shows me that the heap information is present.  Which is exciting:</p>
  
  <p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/EN4BL.png" alt="Minidump Summary"></p>
  
  <p>So at this point I attempt to set the symbol path, which is the bin folder for that particular website.  I've copied it down from the appropriate server.  However, I still only get the option to Debug with Native Only, and when I do that <strong>it can't find any of the appropriate symbols</strong>.</p>
  
  <p>Here's my PDB location setup:</p>
  
  <p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/Zq0SZ.png" alt="PDB Options"></p>
  
  <p>I'm not sure if that's because the call stack seems to stop somewhere in a Windows DLL...?  Here's a screen of the call stack window.</p>
  
  <p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/JODvc.png" alt="Call Stack"></p>
  
  <p>Anyway, my ultimate question is <strong>whether or not I'm following the appropriate path for finding the source of this exception, and, if so, what am I missing</strong>?  It appears to be in unmanaged code but I'd still love to see the last managed call before everything explodes.</p>
  
  <p>Also, in case it's helpful, the web server is Win2003 x86, my PC is Win7 x64.</p>
  
  <p>Thanks!</p>