Windows® Internals, Sixth Edition, Part 1

Windows^® Internals, Sixth Edition, Part 1

Mark E. Russinovich

David A. Solomon

Alex Ionescu

Copyright © 2012

All rights reserved. No part of the contents of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012933511

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Developmental Editor: Devon Musgrave

Project Editor: Carol Dillingham

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Indexer: Christina Yeager

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Cover: Twist Creative • SeattleMicrosoft Press

To our parents, who guided and inspired us to follow our dreams

Introduction

Windows Internals, Sixth Edition is intended for advanced computer professionals (both developers and system administrators) who want to understand how the core components of the Microsoft Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 operating systems work internally. With this knowledge, developers can better comprehend the rationale behind design choices when building applications specific to the Windows platform. Such knowledge can also help developers debug complex problems. System administrators can benefit from this information as well, because understanding how the operating system works “under the covers” facilitates understanding the performance behavior of the system and makes troubleshooting system problems much easier when things go wrong. After reading this book, you should have a better understanding of how Windows works and why it behaves as it does.

Structure of the Book

For the first time, Windows Internals has been divided into two parts. Updating the book for each release of Windows takes considerable time so producing it in two parts allows us to publish the first part earlier.

This book, Part 1, begins with two chapters that define key concepts, introduce the tools used in the book, and describe the overall system architecture and components. The next two chapters present key underlying system and management mechanisms. Part 1 wraps up by covering three core components of the operating system: processes, threads, and jobs; security; and networking.

Part 2, which will be available separately in fall 2012, covers the remaining core subsystems: I/O, storage, memory management, the cache manager, and file systems. Part 2 concludes with a description of the startup and shutdown processes and a description of crash-dump analysis.

History of the Book

This is the sixth edition of a book that was originally called Inside Windows NT (Microsoft Press, 1992), written by Helen Custer (prior to the initial release of Microsoft Windows NT 3.1). Inside Windows NT was the first book ever published about Windows NT and provided key insights into the architecture and design of the system. Inside Windows NT, Second Edition (Microsoft Press, 1998) was written by David Solomon. It updated the original book to cover Windows NT 4.0 and had a greatly increased level of technical depth.