In a way following on from reading a windows *.dmp file
Having received a dump file from random customer, running the debug session to see the crash, you often find it is in a MS or other third party library. The next issue is that you may not have knowledge of the PC setup to such an extent that you can ensure you have the actually modules available.
For instance I'm currently stuck trying to get symbols to load for ntdll.dll (5.01.2600.5512). In MSVC 2005 the path column in the modules list window shows a * before the fully pathed file name, and refuses to load symbols I have downloaded for XP/SP1/SP1a/SP2/SP3.
I have the symbol server setup to download from the internet and store in a local cache which seems to have been working fine for modules that I do have on my PC. Using GUI equivelant to the method
Set _NT_SYMBOL_PATH=srv*d:\SymbolCache*\\server1\Third-Party-PDB;srv*d:\SymbolCache*\\server2\Windows\Symbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols
Perhaps I have the wrong symbols, but as new ones are not downloading where do I go to next? Do I have to contact the customer and ask what SP they have installed, and any other patches? Do I have to install that machine and then run up the debugger with the dmp file to get the symbols I need?
What are you using to debug the minidump? I.e., WinDBG or Visual Studio? And how was the minidump generated?
There should be enough information in the minidump to resolve system dll symbols correctly. Are you using a local download of symbols or http://msdl.microsoft.com/?
Update: You should be able to add the public microsoft symbol store to Tools->Options->Debugging->Symbols->Symbol file (.pdb) locations, and then manually load the symbols by right clicking on the module in the Modules window and loading them if it isn't done automatically.
It's also possibly (likely) that VS 2005 doesn't look at _NT_SYMBOL_PATH to resolve minidump symbols.