How do I stop Visual Studio from creating pdb debug folders?

Question

I'm not sure what changed, but, within the directory where my solution is Visual Studio is creating debug folders.

Here are some of the folders and files being created:

System.Web.Http.pdb/EA80649BB72046E989099D4826726FH83/System.Web.Http.pdb
System.Web.pdb/CG58649BB72046E989099D4826726BHEWL/System.Web.Http.pdb
System.Transactions.pdb/FD28649BB72046E989099D4826726BV8F/System.Web.Http.pdb
System.Xml.pdb/5NIL649BB72046E989099D48267267CD1/System.Web.Http.pdb

Is there a setting I can change to stop these folders from being created? It's cluttering up my solution directory.

Answer 1

In Debug -> Option and Settings -> Debugging -> SymbolsSymbols -> Cache symbols in this directory: try set path something like C:\Users\...\AppData\Local\Temp\SymbolCache

or/and set _nt_symbol_path _NT_SYMBOL_PATH=srv**http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols

Troubleshooting Symbol Problems: run vsperfreport /debugsympath at a command line to display a complete list of the locations where profiler components are loading symbol information and whether the symbol files that are used match the files that your project is using.

This topic describes how find and specify the symbol files.

Answer 2

I just had this problem. Turned out the network share that I had selected for symbol cache was offline/unavailable...

Answer 3

I’ve encountered this phenomenon too. After many try, I’ve solved it very simply, just by unchecking the Microsoft Symbols Servers checkbox in Tools/Options, Debug/Symbols.