FILE: Vb5sp2ds.exe Contains Visual Basic SP2 Debugging Symbols

ID: Q176547

The information in this article applies to:

SUMMARY

Microsoft has made available to the public debugging symbols to aid in the identification of bugs within Microsoft Visual Basic 5.0 with Visual Studio SP2 applied. Debugging symbols allow debugging tools like Visual C++ and Dr. Watson to obtain stack traces describing the functions within built components, such as Msvbvm50.dll, which are being called when a crash occurs. These traces aid Microsoft in diagnosing problems that cannot be easily reproduced on other systems.


MORE INFORMATION

The following file is available for download from the Microsoft Software Library:

~ Vb5sp2ds.exe

For more information about downloading files from the Microsoft Software Library, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Q119591 : How to Obtain Microsoft Support Files from Online Services


To install the debugging symbols, you first must extract them from Vb5sp2ds.exe. When you run the Vb5sp2ds.exe, it will prompt you for a directory in which to extract the files. When the extraction process is complete, there will be two sub-directories containing the debugging symbol files. These files all have a .dbg file extension.

The .dbg files in the "x86" directory are for debugging Visual Studio Service Pack 2 on Intel platforms. The .dbg files in the "Alpha" directory are for debugging Visual Studio Service Pack 2 on the Alpha platform.

Different debugging tools have different methods of locating debugging symbols. Usually, you can put a DBG file in the same directory as the .exe, .dll, or .ocx for which it applies and a debugging tool will find it. For instance, if MSVBVM50.DLL is in C:\Winnt\System32 directory, you can copy Msvbvm50.dbg to C:\Winnt\System32 and most debugging tools will locate it. You should consult your debugging tool documentation for more information on installing debugging symbols so that the tool can use them.

All the .dbg files in Vb5sp2ds.exe include only Common Object File Format (COFF) debugging symbols. To use them with Visual C++ 5.0, you must copy Symcvt.dll from your Visual C++ CD-ROM to your Windows system directory. Drwtsn32.exe that comes with NT can understand the COFF debugging symbols without Symcvt.dll.

Additional query words: Debugging, SP2, DBG 


Keywords          : kbVBp500 kbVS97sp2 
Version           : WINDOWS:5.0,6.0,97sp2
Platform          : WINDOWS 
Issue type        : kbinfo

Last Reviewed: June 2, 1999