Category Archives: Reverse Engineering

How to download PDB symbols in Ghidra

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About the only article I can find that references downloading symbols from a remote symbol server in Ghidra doesn’t seem to be current with at least version 10.4. This feature was added in the 10.0 release but it seems to have changed slightly since then.

With CodeBrowser loaded you’ll first need to configure your Local Symbol Storage directory using Tools -> Symbol Server Config.

Unconfigured Symbol Server Search dialog

Once you’ve selected your Local Symbol Storage directory you’re then able to add a remote symbol server via Additional Search Paths by hitting the + button. After clicking Ok you can then download symbols via File -> Load PDB File…, click Advanced > >, and then click Search All. If a PDB is available it will show up in the PDB Search pane, and then you can click Load to trigger the download.

Fixing Taiko no Tatsujin: The Drum Master! on Windows

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Taiko no Tatsujin’s sign in error on its title screen

Microsoft recently made BANDAI NAMCO’s “Taiko no Tatsujin: The Drum Master!” (TnT) available on Xbox for Windows – included with the GAME PASS no less – but it came with an important catch: it doesn’t work. Starting the game leaves you stuck at the title screen with a message, “After signing into a Microsoft account, please restart the game.”

Sitting around waiting for Microsoft to fix this is one option, but another is fixing it ourselves. The game is built using Unity and Microsoft allows you to set the game as Moddable opening the door to all sorts of opportunities. Since the game is a .NET application written in C#, there’s already a swath of utilities out there that make this relatively straightforward (and free!).

We’ll make use of the following roster of applications:

This won’t be an intensive tutorial on everything you need to know to go from idea (i.e., fixing sign in) to execution (i.e., writing a patch), but it should prime your mind for the kinds of things that are possible. If you want to skip to the end, there is a link to the GitHub repository which also includes a pre-compiled binary for use with BepInEx to fix the game.

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