Windows Internals

See how the core components of the Windows operating system work behind the scenes—guided by a team of internationally renowned internals experts. Fully updated for Windows Server(R) 2008 and Windows Vista(R), this classic guide delivers key architectural insights on system design, debugging, performance, and support—along with hands-on experiments to experience Windows internal behavior firsthand.

Delve inside Windows architecture and internals:

• Understand how the core system and management mechanisms work—from the object manager to services to the registry
• Explore internal system data structures using tools like the kernel debugger
• Grasp the scheduler's priority and CPU placement algorithms
• Go inside the Windows security model to see how it authorizes access to data
• Understand how Windows manages physical and virtual memory
• Tour the Windows networking stack from top to bottom—including APIs, protocol drivers, and network adapter drivers
• Troubleshoot file-system access problems and system boot problems
• Learn how to analyze crashes

Mark Russinovich is a Technical Fellow in the Windows Azure group at Microsoft. He is coauthor of Windows Sysinternals Administrator’s Reference, co-creator of the Sysinternals tools available from Microsoft TechNet, and coauthor of the Windows Internals book series. David A. Solomon is coauthor of the Windows Internals book series and has taught his Windows internals class to thousands of developers and IT professionals worldwide, including Microsoft staff. He is a regular speaker at Microsoft conferences, including TechNet and PDC. Alex Ionescu is a chief software architect and consultant expert in low-level system software, kernel development, security training, and reverse engineering. He teaches Windows internals course with David Solomon, and is active in the security research community.