Windows® Internals: Including Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista, Fifth Edition 5th ed. Edition

by Mark Russinovich (Author), David A. Solomon (Author), Alex Ionescu (Contributor)

45 ratings

ISBN-13: 978-0735625303

ISBN-10: 0735625301

Why is ISBN important?

Share <Embed>

Other Sellers

from

Other Sellers

See all 4 versions

Used: Good | Details

Sold by Lyken Goods

Fulfilled by Amazon

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime

FREE delivery: Monday, Dec 13 on orders over $25.00 shipped by Amazon. Details

Fastest delivery: Thursday, Dec 9
Order within 3 hrs and 24 mins Details

Arrives before Christmas

Only 1 left in stock - order soon.

Sold by summerbreezebooks and Fulfilled by Amazon.

Available at a lower price from other sellers that may not offer free Prime shipping.

List Price: $69.99 Details

Save: $43.13 (61%)

FREE delivery: Wednesday, Dec 15 Details

Arrives before Christmas

Available at a lower price from other sellers that may not offer free Prime shipping.

There is a newer edition of this item:

Windows Internals, Part 1: System architecture, processes, threads, memory management, and more (Developer Reference)
$29.41
(265)
In Stock.

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® 2008 and Windows Vista®, 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

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

Greg Hoglund
53
Paperback
43 offers from $1.55
Mark E. Russinovich
59
Hardcover
44 offers from $3.23

What other items do customers buy after viewing this item?

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

Greg Hoglund
53
Paperback
43 offers from $1.55
Mark E. Russinovich
59
Hardcover
44 offers from $3.23

Special offers and product promotions

Create your FREE Amazon Business account to save up to 10% with Business-only prices and free shipping.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Mark E. Russinovich is chief software architect and cofounder of Winternals Software, a company that specializes in advanced systems software for Windows. He authored the Sysinternals tools featured in this book. Mark has a Ph.D. in computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. He is also a senior contributing editor for Windows® IT Pro Magazine.

David A. Solomon is coauthor of the WINDOWS INTERNALS book series and teaches classes on Windows internals to corporations worldwide, including Microsoft®. He is a regular speaker at Microsoft technical conferences and previously was a lead developer for the VMS operating system.

Alex is currently studying at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, and is in his first year of obtaining a bachelor's degree in Software Engineering. He is also a Microsoft® Student Ambassador and is representing the company on campus as a Technical Rep.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Microsoft Press; 5th ed. edition (June 17, 2009)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 1232 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0735625301
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0735625303
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 4.35 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.75 x 2.25 x 9.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,408,983 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #301 in Windows Administration (Books)
- #1,011 in Microsoft C & C++ Windows Programming
- #1,385 in Microsoft OS Guides

Customer Reviews:
45 ratings

Start reading Windows Internals (Developer Reference) on your Kindle in under a minute.

Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

David A. Solomon

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Customer reviews

5 star		78%
4 star		9%
3 star		4%
2 star		9%
1 star 0% (0%)		0%

How are ratings calculated?

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Edward A. Averill

A sanity-saver and phenomenal reference

Reviewed in the United States on September 13, 2010

Verified Purchase

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.

7 people found this helpful

Helpful

Joe

My poroduct arrived in perfect condition

Reviewed in the United States on September 7, 2016

Verified Purchase

I've gotten by my entire adult life putting together and tweaking PC's without Windows Internals. I figured it was time to check this publication out. Most of the same information you can find out there on the internet. Now I do imagine that there are times when you'll need a good reference for solving problems no one else runs into. I've just personally never found any piece of enlightenment from such a publication.

Helpful

Jason Fossen

Open the hood and get your hands dirty in the engine

Reviewed in the United States on August 21, 2009

Verified Purchase

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.

13 people found this helpful

Helpful

SemioticLabyrinth

Linux lover loved this book!

Reviewed in the United States on September 13, 2016

Verified Purchase

I'm a Linux guy all the way, but this book made me appreciate Windows as an OS. It showed me that for all the fighting, there's actually a lot in common between the two. My career took me toward web development, but I'm sure this would have been one of my favorite background knowledge books for Windows if I had gone that way. Russinovich deserves his accolades.

Helpful

Michael Gautier

Mastering Windows Systems Administration

Reviewed in the United States on September 15, 2013

Verified Purchase

Knowing the various corners of Microsoft Windows can be useful in optimizing and troubleshooting software applications and systems for the platform. This was what I gained from the 4th edition of the book when I read it in 2005 despite having used Microsoft Windows since 1992 and MS-DOS since 1989. The book provides you with an extensive base of knowledge about every aspect of Microsoft Windows at a systems level. Whatever you need to know about Windows as far as it's technical limits and capabilities in terms of how the system runs, this book has all the information.

Helpful

Pusheen3

Goes Deep but Overkill For Most People

Reviewed in the United States on September 5, 2016

Verified Purchase

Found the text to be intensely overwhelming and I found it hard to take the individual pieces and see how they fit in the big picture. Found this book to be overkill for purpose I bought it (understanding windows for application development).

Helpful

Andrew Malcolm

Depth off the deep end

Reviewed in the United States on February 10, 2013

Verified Purchase

If you want to know what makes Windows tick, this reference provides an EXCELLENT nuts and bolts reference for how everything really works under the hood. This book has been an invaluable professional learning resource for me. It goes into great detail about how core technologies, protocols, and security components work, both in workgroup and domain environments. I'd call this book required reading for Windows SysAdmins.

Helpful

Rick H.

In depth and detailed look into the internals of Windows Vista

Reviewed in the United States on September 7, 2009

Verified Purchase

This book is a must have for Windows Vista and MS Server 2008 administrators and support pros. Delving into all aspects of the operating systems with detailed explanations of the workings of both the server and the Vista client. I highly reccomend this book for anyone who wants to truly get to know the two systems.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

C.W

Very in depth resource for IT Pros and Developers

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 12, 2009

Verified Purchase

I have only had this book for a couple of days and have not completely finished reading it yet so cannot comment on all of the chapters, but what I have read so far has been interesting and valuable. Obviously in a book like this that goes into so much depth in so many areas, there are going to be some parts that are not useful to everyone but there is so much detailed information in here that I think any IT pro or Windows developer will find it an interesting and useful read.

This is very different to any other IT book I have read because normally these books just tell you how to do something and perhaps give you a brief explanation of how it works behind the scenes but this book is ALL ABOUT what happens behind the scenes. As a small example: a couple of pages in the Security section explain what exactly happens when you press Ctrl Alt Delete and log in (and also what happens before that point) - it explains which processes, DLLs, APIs, internal functions etc are used and in what order they are used... and that is one of the less detailed parts of this book! Other sections even go far as telling you the names of internal data structures and constants that Windows uses to do its work and although I have only had a brief look at the Memory Management chapter, it seems extremely detailed (over 140 pages).

It is actually more useful to me as an IT pro than I thought as it has given me an insight into things that I use often at work such as Hyper V (although that is one of the less in depth parts, there are still roughly 15 pages dedicated to it), the Volume Shadow Copy service, the Cache system built into Windows, networking, crash dump analysis and much more.

One thing I will say, which is not necessarily negative, is that it is not for beginners. I think really you need to understand at least a little bit about programming concepts and terminology and also be very familiar with Windows in general to really understand what a lot of this book is telling you. I've been an IT Professional for 3 years or so and do some .NET programming whenever I can but I struggle to grasp some of the things that are in here as there is not always an explanation of some of the terms or acronnyms used. To be fair to the author though, I dont think explanations of such things belong in this book as then it would be weighed down with explanations of too many basic concepts etc (and it is already roughly 1100 pages!).

Overall, one of the most interesting IT books I have purchased and I am looking forward to reading the rest of it.

6 people found this helpful

minusdot

Essential Reading, but not suitable for Kindle.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 11, 2011

Verified Purchase

I've always kept the latest version of this on my desk as it's an essential reference for Windows developers. However it's a hefty tome and I was hoping that the Kindle version would be more portable. The Windows 2000 version of this book came with a CD with the book in electronic format in a proprietary format - you needed to take the CD with you, but it was handier than carrying the book. Sadly the images are poorly scanned and are almost unreadable if they contain text (as many do) even when zoomed in, or viewed on the PC. It would be fantastic if they could get this right for the next version of this book.

5 people found this helpful

Andrey Petkov

Amazing book!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 21, 2010

Verified Purchase

Mark Rusinovich is well....Mark Rusinovich - the name speaks for itself. This book offers great details on how windows actually ticks. Pools, APC, Memory Management, Networking, Drivers, etc., you name it - it's there. A book which is also a great reference, for if you or your company is doing windows related programming is a must have in the library.

Mark also explains about his sysinternals tools and how to use and get the most of them. Windows Debugging Tools are also covered in great details. Amazing stuff. It's one of those books that you really need a computer beside you, because the techniques you will see throughout the book, you will want to try immediately.

Microsoft Windows is immensely huge and complex. Reading about how it has been composed with notions of extensibility, composability, security is great experience for anybody who is serious about programming.

Great book! Highly recommended.

One person found this helpful

E. Metcalfe

Excellent as Usual

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 23, 2010

Verified Purchase

I already had the fourth edition of this book (covering Windows XP and Server 2003) and had been looking forward to the updated version for many months. The new version covering Vista and Windows Server 2008 is not just a rehash of the previous edition but a drains-up rewrite covering a huge amount of topics that have not appeared in previous editions.

As this book covers the Windows kernel it's certainly not for the novice, however as a resource for professional programmers and system administrators it is unparalleled. Congratulations to Mark Russinovich and David Solomon on another excellent title in the Windows Internals range - I can't wait for the sixth edition!

One person found this helpful

Mr. Michael E. Diack

Excellent as usual from these guys.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 23, 2009

Verified Purchase

Another excellent book from the guys. If you've read their prior efforts, you'll know what to expect - hugely detailed, but readable and understandable descriptions of how windows works from the inside out.

Sadly as was the case with 4th edition, there's no ebook supplied, but it's still excellent.

What is even more interesting is the planned 6th edition for next year for the small(ish) set of changes between Vista and Windows 7. That'll be great to see.

Mike

2 people found this helpful

See all reviews