How can I abort a long operation in WinDbg?

Question

Often WinDbg will enter a state where it is *Busy* performing an operation.

Often this is due to some mistake I made trying to dt some_variable_itll_never_find or setting a break point somewhere without symbols or the 1000's of other mistakes I make fumbling around this tool.

Is there a way to cancel the current operation?

Solution 1

I don't have the tool now, but as far as I remember it should be Ctrl+Break.

Solution 2

Sometimes Ctrl+Break doesnt work. At that point you may use Debug menu -> Break.

Thanks

Solution 3

Ctrl+Break 

will forcibly Debug break all but if for instance you entered some windbg command that takes a long time and you want to kill that then you should enter

Ctrl+c

This will kill the current running command.

Solution 4

You probably had "http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols" in the symbol path. Windbg will try to locate all your PDBs on Microsoft site :-(.
Pressing Ctrl+Break is not fast enough. What I usually do is to unplug the network cable, until Windbg wakes up. Just be carfull, if Windbg was realy downloading one if its OS DLL, the DLL gets curropted. You will need .reload /o to fix that DLL. I only unplug when I know all OS DLL were already downloaded.

To avoid this delay in the first place, uncheck "Resolve Unqualified Symbols" found under the "Debug" menu.

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Comments

[Aardvark]

Thanks! Seems like this key combo doesn't work on on the Virtual PC I was using - which is why I dismissed this suggestion when I found something on Google about it. Seems fine on my "real" PC.

[Ohad Schneider]

Using the menu: Debug -> Break (for some reason the keyboard shortcut wasn't working for me)