Customer Reviews

Windows® Internals: Including Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista, Fifth Edition (Pro Developer)

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Late last week (around 7/2/2009), a small but heavy box showed up at my door. I'd long since forgotten bugging Mark Russinovich last December for a review copy of the latest edition of his Windows internals book: Windows Internals: Including Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista, 5th edition, co-authored with David A. Solomon and Alex Ionescu, but there it was in my hot little hands. In my odd free moments since then, I've been plowing through this 1,260 page book to see what's new and interesting -- though I obviously haven't had time to read it in its entirety. Keep that caveat in mind as I extoll this book's many treasures.

Here's another caveat: the primary audience for this book is Windows system developers. They're the people who will get the most out of its contents, and my lack of in-depth Windows system programming experience probably explains why my eyes glaze over and my mind goes on vacation as I look at certain sections in the book.

That said, there's a tremendous wealth of information on Windows in here (and from what I can tell, thanks to having recently updated 9 chapters for the upcoming Pearson title "Windows 7 in Depth" it applies nearly 100% to Windows 7 as well as Windows Vista, thanks to relatively little changes in the kernel and other system facilities between these two most recent desktop Windows versions). In particular, these are the topics that I found most interesting and illuminating as I flipped through the book for a first quick pass over its contents (I'll report again from time to time as I dig more deeply into its contents):

Chapter 2 System Architecture: learned a thing or two about device drivers, and how to find them, in this chapter.
Chapter 3 System Mechanisms: the best coverage of the MS Hyper-V Hypervisor I've ever seen anywhere.
Chapter 4 Management Mechanisms: as in previous versions, this chapter provides some of the best information about how the Windows registry is structured, and how it works, that I've ever seen. Worth the price of admission all by itself.
Chapter 5 Processess, Threads, and Jobs: Here's a tour-de-force illustration of Mark Russinovich's knowledge of Windows internals, and how nicely the SysInternals tools work to reveal their inner workings.
Chapter 6 Security: Provides a killer walkthrough of how Windows performs access checks and uses security identifiers (SIDs) for accounts, groups, and logons. Lots of good detail here on security minutae.
Chapter 7 I/O System: includes great sections on Windows Plug and Play (PnP) operation and facilities, and ditto for ACPI/Power Manager.
Chapter 8 Storage Management: Best discussions of both BitLocker Drive Encyrption and Volume Shadow Copy Servive (VSS) I've seen anywhere.
Chapter 9 Memory Management: Another embarrassment of riches, and also worth the price of the book all by itself, especially the sections on physical memmory limits, working sets, and SuperFetch/ReadyBoost/ReadyDrive.
Chapter 11 File Systems is worthwhile because it pulls info on all the Windows file systems together in one place and because it provides lots of great information on NTFS in particular.
Chapter 12 Networking: lots of good information on the Windows IP stack, NetBIOS, MUP, NLA, LLTD, NAT, and more. I need to spend more time with this chapter to savor it more fully.
Chapter 13 Startup and Shutdown: Great excursions into BIOS boot processes, BCD and Bootmgr, EFI boot stuff, plus more on ReadyBoot/ReadyBoost interaction. The great, great section on troubleshooting boot an startup problems is another gem.
Chapter 14 Crash Dump Analysis: the second on "The Blue Screen" includes a list of the top 30 stop codes for Windows Vista, and included all my old familiars, for sure. The in-depth discussion of crash dump analysis includes basic and advanced sections, and is also sure to reward further study.

Anybody who works with Windows regularly and needs to understand its inner working will find their investment in this book amply repaid. It is worth every bit of the $38 to $70 you'll pay for it by shopping online. My only beef about this book is that it's a monster, at over 1,200 pages and 4.4 pounds, it's a bit too heavy to read in your lap or hold in your hands for very long. You'll want to plant this puppy on a table to flip through its many useful bits of information.

Windows Internals is one of two "foundation" books that should be on the bookshelf of every sysadmin and win engineer. The other is Windows Server 2008 Inside Out. Between the two you have everything you'll likely want to ever know about the core of Windows.

I have read Stanek and Russinovich's work for years and have the utmost respect for both. As I imagine with most readers, I don't need to know everything about Windows but I do need to know everything possible about certain issues. In this book, this is the kernel, memory management, I/O sub-system (ACPI/PnP) and storage (ntfs).

Clearly Windows Internals is written for system level developers and they'l get the most benefit from this book, but there is a ton of stuff for IT professionals as well. It is not easy reading, you have to know something more about operating systems to understand it.

This book goes into depth, with real world ways you can apply (like practical exercises). I highly recommend this book to developers, sysadmins and win engineers who needs a very indepth analysis of Windows Vista/Windows Server 2008.

The authors have taken an extremely complex subject and cut it up into little bit-size pieces. Laid out, a huge, complex system is there to take in as small chunks of manageable topics.

The authors know their subject, and don't try to impress you with their knowledge. Also, they are unbiased about the topic. No operating system is perfect, but after reading the book, at least you'll know why things don't work properly. (For example, why does the OS hang if you put in a blank DVD?)

There is an awful lot of meat in this book. Some topics you'll want to skip, some you'll want to memorize: but it will put you at the front of the pack, because so much of what you learn is vital to being the best IT professional you can be.

Excellent, just excellent.

You don't have to be a C/C++ developer to enjoy this book, it's for anyone who wants to dig into the guts of Windows. The book provides a guided tour of Windows internals using the Sysinternals tools and other free utilities from Microsoft's web site. If you're worried that this material doesn't apply to Windows 7, don't worry, most of it does, and there are nice videos on the Channel9 page of the MSDN site which go over some of the differences between Vista and 7 to fill the gaps. Importantly, this is a hands-on book with lots of tool walk-throughs to bring the abstract material to life, so start with the topics which interest you the most (security, networking stack, I/O, whatever) and jump around the chapters while sitting at a test computer, you don't have to read it cover to cover like a textbook.

I ordered the book on the basis of my admiration of Mark Russ.. brilliance & in his layman speak about matters as intense & technical as an O/S kernel. However, when i received the book I found it just as crisp in its detail, very low key on the techno speak & abundant with detailed easy to understand technical material.

It doesn't leave you googling for explanation on any aspect that it mentions, all the detailed and inter-related topics are simply there.

I found myself reading aspect of the kernel that in reality are of no interest to me, simply read them there because the explanation was crisp, precise and so easy to follow.

Love the book, excellent value for money via Amazon through which I buy all my technical books even though I'm in Sydney - Aust.

Windows Internals, 5th Ed (WI5E) by Mark Russinovich and David Solomon, with Alex Ionescu, is a remarkable technical achievement. I read the book to better understand Windows to improve my security knowledge. I am not a Windows programmer, but I thought WI5E would provide context for some of the exploit and vulnerability information I occasionally encounter. I absorbed as much of WI5E as I could, but quickly found the scope and depth of the material to be incredible. While there is no substitute for reading source code, the explanations in WI5E come close! So many aspects of Windows are described, to such a deep level, that you might find yourself wanting to use Windows just to see WI5E's descriptions at work.

One of the best aspects of WI5E is the demonstration of "Experiments." Dozens of times per chapter the authors explain a key concept or detail by showing it at work in Windows. Sometimes they use a Sysinternals tool, sometimes they use a debugger, and sometimes they use other Windows utilities. I thought this was a great way to get readers to learn more about Windows in a hands-on environment.

Another unique feature of WI5E is the 30-page glossary. While not covering every item I might have wanted to see, it was truly helpful. I also liked the figures and tables. For example, Figure 12-2, OSI Model and Windows Networking Components, offered a great overview of how Windows components provide networking services, while Table 3-25, Components Protected by KPP, addressed a security topic that interested me.

My only suggestion for future improvement would be to give readers like myself more opportunities to see the big picture. I often felt overwhelmed and sometimes lost when reading WI5E. I think summaries (multipage if necessary) at the end of each chapter could have shown the high points or major themes of each chapter?

In any case, WI5E is an amazing book. I am astounded the authors can cover such vast swathes of Windows territory in one book, especially with plans for the 6th edition already unfolding. Bravo.

I've recently been transitioning from WinCE and Linux driver to Vista/Win7 drivers and middleware, and while there's a ton of information online chasing down accurate data when you have a deadline can be fairly daunting.

I'd heard good buzz about this book so I hit Amazon and grabbed a copy. And, after having it next to my workstation for 2 weeks, I can say that in my opinion this is the best-organized, most complete, and accessible book on Windows internals and architecture I've ever found. I have yet to run into an issue in my real-world work that I couldn't get some insight on in this book, typically inside a few minutes. For someone in the trenches as a contractor, where I never know what kind of curve I'll get thrown, this book is worth it's weight in Tums.. erm.. gold.

The only thing I'd wish for is more info on the Windows Driver Framework, but that's an entire book on it's own, I guess, and this thing is already hefty enough.

This is just the latest in the windows internals series. Anyone wanting to really understand Widnows under the covers should have this. I like it because it gives good, solid explanations of concepts like Memory management, pagefiles etc, and gives recommendations so it isn't just theory. There are lots of illustrations to help you visualize what he is saying - so it all make sense. any Windows admin or serious IT professional who deals with Windows servers has to have this on their bookshelf.

For all security and architecture enthusiasts, this book will prove an indispensable guide to mastering the secrets of Windows system design, performance et al. All chapters feature revealing experiments, serving to strengthen the graps on the subject matter even further. The section on CPU algorithms does a great job of explaining CPU sequencing and placement;the accessibility of the language turns traditionally abstruse topics such as virtual memory task-tiering and the workings of APIs into worthwhile, instructive reading.
There are enough savory bits to elicit the interest of tech mavens as well as more junior developers alike, and I whole-heartedly recommend it to both!

Already the fifth edition of what is THE Windows Guide. A must have for every Windows "afficionado"! Gives an in depth view of the internals of the Windows-family. Clear and straight as one can expect of Mark R.