Windows Performance Analyzer cannot load symbols

Question

I open .etl(produced by xperf) file with WPA, I can see the information about Analysis:

I also want to see the process stack, and I think I should load symbols first. But the Load Symbols in Trace is grayed out:

I want to ask how to load symbols to see the process stack?

WPA version: 10.0.19041.685(WinBuild.160101.0800)

OS version: Windows Server 2019 Datacenter

OS build: 17763.1637

Answer 1

To be able to load debug symbols, it is required to have the PDB names + a GUID that is generated during linking.

This information is not included, so all ETW tools add KernelTraceControl/DbgID_RSDS events to ETL files at stop in a merge step. When using xperf, you have to call -d at stop (xperf -d result.etl).

To verify that the required event is included, open the ETL in Perfview in look in events:

If you can't find the events, the trace was not captured correctly and is useless.