Inside Windows 2000 (Microsoft Programming Series): Amazon.co.uk: David Solomon, David A. Solomon, Mark Russinovich: Books

Amazon.co.uk Review

Microsoft Windows 2000 internals have a very logical structure. In Inside Microsoft Windows 2000, David Solomon and Mark Russinovich explain what goes on behind the curtain as Windows 2000 manages memory, regulates access to input and output devices, controls persistent storage, communicates with the network, and does the rest of its duties as a modern operating system. This is a text for programmers, and it's packed with call-by-call documentation of what happens when Windows 2000 is told to perform various operations. There's not as much code in this book as you might expect--it's mostly text. Once you have the architecture figured out, you ought to be able to implement your code more easily.

The chapter on memory management exemplifies this careful approach to Windows 2000 internals. What memory management does (it maps the virtual memory range of threads into registers on physical devices, and handles overflow from volatile memory onto disk) is discussed. Then you learn the more obvious ways of observing and tweaking memory performance (the Performance tab in Task Manager and the Registry). Finally you get detailed information on how Windows 2000 handles mapping, and the use of dozens of memory-related Win32 API calls. --David Wall

Topics covered: The Microsoft Windows 2000 operating system kernel and its internal operations; the specific behaviours of various subsystems, including memory management, threading, security, caching, and network communications.

Product Description

This newly updated, official guide to the Microsoft "RM" Windows 2000 core architecture and internals provides the key to help readers unlock the full power of Microsoft's premier operating system. Written in full partnership with the Microsoft Windows 2000 product development team, this book takes developers, technical managers, and IS professionals deep into the core components of Windows 2000. Along the way, it provides abundant information and perspective that readers can quickly apply for better design, debugging, performance, and troubleshooting. It's packed with up-to-the-minute information -- and unrivaled programming insights -- about topics such as Plug and Play, power management, the Windows Driver Model, security, 64-bit extended addressing support, job objects, new priority classes, NTFS extensions, kernel streaming and kernel code, and registry internals. In short, this is the must-have text for anyone who wants to get the most out of Microsoft Windows 2000.

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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful

Excellent! 23 Feb 2002

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

I can't believe the other reviews that this book is not detailed. It contains lots of detail about how the core OS works.

It isn't intended to be an Administrators 'how to' guide, nor is it a programming guide. It is aimed at developers to give them a better understanding of how the OS works and strikes a good balance between being too much of an overview and going into needless detail.

Don't buy this if you want to know such things as 'how do i create user accounts', 'where do I change my networking settings', etc. Get any of the large number of administrator 'companions'

Similarly, don't buy if you are interested in such things as 'which API to use to access accounts in active directory', etc. Again, look at some of the excellent coding books available.

*DO* buy it if you want a really solid understanding of how the OS does its work and are interested in such things as 'what is happening in the background when my system is booting?', 'how does windows map the virtual address space to my physical memory?', etc

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

This is the definitive guide to inside Windows 2000 19 Sep 2000

By Ian Middleton

This is the third edition of Inside Windows NT/2000 series. The first edition published way back in 1995 covered NT3.5 and NT3.51 was really only an overview of the OS, nothing really to try hands on. The second edition by David Solomon in 1998 updated the original to include NT4.0 as well as including many hands on experiments to try on the running OS.

The third edition includes extensive descriptions of Windows 2000 internals, the difference to NT4.0, the numerous additions to Windows 2000 as well as many hands on experiments. On the companion CD, there is live kernel debugger tool (LiveKd) which enables a running kernel to be experimented on reasonably safely. I am sure that the LiveKd tool is easily worth cost of the book.

This book won't help you use Windows 2000, install Windows 2000, write applications or device drivers but as a Windows 2000 "power user" who likes to delve a bit into how things work this book is invaluable. A must for all Windows 2000 "power users" who have wondered "how does it do that" or "how does that work"

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

Inside Windows 2000 2 Dec 2003

By Jamie Fraser

This book is superb for anyone needing or wanting to understand how W2k works at a low level. I had a problem with device interrupts and after reading this book was able to understand and isolate the problem.

Essential reading for anyone writing engineering or scientific applications, particularly those that have pseudo time critical requirements (I say pseudo because, as the book explains, W2k is not a real-time OS).