Windows 10: Issue with WinDBG being incredibly slow

Hello! Not sure if this is the correct subforum, but since it's related to WinDBG I thought it was close enough.

I'm doing some helping out over at reddit's techsupport channel and a fair bit of that involves checking dump files. I have used the old WinDBG (From 2012, installed on Win7, kept the same install into a Win10 upgrade a year ago), but recently it was giving me some issues so I decided to install a new version. Just for completeness' sake, the old issue was that after doing .symfix and .reload, it would hang for about 5 minutes and then hang for another 5 minutes when repeating !analyze -v. The downloading symbols part would take about 15-20 seconds and then it would just hang. Checked through third party software that monitors internet usage. The old version would only use local symbols when you first loaded in a new dump file while (I think) the new version loads symbols from the Microsoft server automatically.

The new issue is that whenever I load in a dump file, it's slow beyond belief. It gets to this part and then it just slows to a crawl. It will output about one line every 5-10 minutes and it takes one hour before it's done and displays the information and I can enter any commands. If I try to exit out of WinDBG, the software will freeze, giving me a Windows prompt saying it's not responding. Use of the Break command, both through Ctrl+Break and Debug -> Break, has no effect.

It could be an issue with acquiring the symbols from the server. I have added WinDBG to my approved list in the Windows Firewall to no effect. I do use a third party tool called Netlimiter since my network speed is terrible and it's useful for weeding out processes that uses excessive internet at the wrong time. It's reporting that WinDBG uses 3-5 kilobyte/s for 1-2 seconds every 10 seconds while this is happening. The old version would max my internet speed for about 15-20 seconds after doing .symfix and .reload.

Symbol path: srv*Symbol information

EDIT: All my tests have been with minidumps (Small memory dump, 256kb).

Thank you for any help!

:)

 

Windows 10 file explorer very slow (working on it...) issue

None of this has worked. It will still often revert to being incredibly slow on file explorer. Any other suggestions? Thanks in advance!

 

System is incredibly slow

So ever since getting this laptop a while back, it's been incredibly slow. I tried running Windows Defender to see if it could potentially solve the issue, but if anything the computer seems to be running even slower, and I could not find a solution. I attempted
to look at the boards here and found that I should run a recorder to see if it could potentially give any information and then post it. So here is the link to the Analyzer file I zipped:

Microsoft OneDrive - Access files anywhere. Create docs with free Office Online.

Please help!

Thanks,

 

Hi Bjoolz,

First, you're symbol path is improper, because you don't tell where you want to download the symbols.
Please check step 3 of WinDBG - Install Configure - Windows 10 Forums

 

I initially had the symcache portion, but removed it when it became obvious how slow it was since I never had it on my old install. Sorry for not mentioning it.

EDIT: I have now re-enabled it, copy pasting from the guide, and there is no change.

 

Of course there is no change, everything needs to be downloaded first what takes time.

 

But it's barely using any bandwidth. Over the last hour it has downloaded 7.3 megabytes. I also tried opening the same dump file again since it had just completed and it's just as slow as before. It has now been 10 minutes and it's not using any bandwidth this time either.

 

Try what @WinDBG - Install Configure - Page 4 - Windows 10 Forums[/b]

 

It worked. It's now basically instant. Guess I shouldn't have assumed that leaving it blank would stop it from trying to use the Microsoft server automatically. Downloading that much on a 4mbps line is not gonna be fun though.

 

Just wanted to update the thread in case someone else stumbles in here with the same issue. Changing it to only use local symbols made it instant, but a hassle since it's very common to not have the correct symbols. .symfix and .reload gave the same 1 hour issue as loading a dump file and have it automatic. Now however it just suddenly works. I haven't done anything to make it work, it just started working.

Only logical reason for why it didn't work must be that it was network related. No idea if it was local settings or a routing issue. If you experience the same issue, you might have to just wait for a week or try forcing different routing by using a VPN.