Why is loaded dll missing in Visual Studio's modules list?

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I am currently bug hunting and need to debug into a specific dll in the release configuration in Visual Studio 2005. At some point I closed the solution, did some other stuff and reloaded it. From that point on my breakpoint doesn't get hit and I get the infamous "No symbols have been loaded..." message. So I opened the modules window and the dll that I want to debug doesn't appear in the list anymore, therefore I cannot load symbols manually. The application behaves normal so I am absolutely sure that the dll MUST have been loaded to execute certain functions. Sure enough, if I rename the dll and start up the application it doesn't work anymore, so it also must be the right dll.

I tried setting the dll project as startup project and the command to execute to the application's exe and starting the application from outside visual studio and then attaching to the process, all to no avail.

Question is, why is the dll not appearing in the list of loaded modules although it must have been loaded? I cannot think of any other changes that I've done, that could cause this, am I missing something? (Maybe something really obvious?)

Any help appreciated!

4 Answers

I had the same issue with visual studio 2017 Pro and searched for a week but no luck then i installed VS2019 Pro and test with same project but the break point wasn't working at all and the project's DLL was missing from the modules list. I was running multiple projects under one solution and i suddenly observed that if select project1 as "Startup Project" the DLL of that project is loaded only in the module list. So as i was testing an API and I switched API project as Startup Project and observed now the API DLL files are loaded into the modules list.

Right Click on your required project that you want to include it's DLL files in the module list and set it as "Startup Project"

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