The Native pane of the Options dialog box allows you to set the following options for debugging native Win32 applications.
RPC Debugging
Select this control if you want to step into COM remote procedure calls when debugging.
Load COFF and Exports
Select this box to load COFF-format debugging information or DLL export tables. COFF is a format used by some other debuggers. You can find COFF-format information in the MSVBVM50.DBG file shipped provided with Visual Basic 5.01, for example. Symbolic information from DLL export tables can be useful if you are working with Windows 95/98 system DLLs, Windows messages, Windows procedures (WindowProcs), COM objects, or marshalling. Reading COFF and DLL export information entails some overhead, so this capability is turned off by default.
To see whether a DBG file contains CodeView- or COFF-format information, use dumpbin /headers. Look in the Debug Directories section of the output file for COFF (coff) or CodeView (cv) entries.
To see what symbols are available in the export table of a DLL, use dumpbin /exports. Symbols are available for any 32-bit system DLL. By reading the dumpbin /exports output, you can see the exact function name, including non-alphanumeric characters. This is useful for setting a breakpoint on a function. Function names from DLL export tables may appear truncated elsewhere in the debugger. The calls are listed in the calling order, with the current function (the most deeply nested) at the top