Book Reviews: Inside Windows NT

[jhawthorn]

This thread is a place to discuss the book titled Inside Windows NT located on the Books wiki page.

[AndrewAPrice]

Nobody's posted here. I don't think people like this book.

[Colonel Kernel]

I like the book, I just never noticed this thread before.

I'll say more about it later, when I have time.

[Colonel Kernel]

I've owned Inside Windows NT for nine years and I've read through it about 2.5 times -- twice from cover to cover, and the rest by jumping around, using it as a reference. It was the first OS book I'd ever read that went into technical details on how mechanisms like context switching and virtual memory are actually implemented (this was before I bought Tanenbaum's book and looked through Minix and Linux kernel source code). The details are a bit vague and open to interpretation at times, but it's more than you'll get from a high-level OS textbook.

The writing is quite clear and easy to follow -- the authors don't try to be overly clever, but just get straight to the point. In contrast, Tanenbaum can wander sometimes.

What I like the most about this book is its clear, top-down dissection of the NT architecture. It starts with the big picture and focuses in on each major subsystem, explaining each one with just enough (but not too much) detail. Everything is presented very coherently.

To summarize with comparisons:

• It's not as good as Tanenbaum's books because it lacks the higher-level theory and the smattering of low-level details like source code.
• It's better than Tanenbaum's books because its examples are from a fully-featured commercial OS, not a "toy OS" just designed for teaching.
• It's not as good as most OS text books in the theory department.
• It's better than most OS text books because it has some implementation details.
• It's not as good as "Mac OS X Internals: A Systems Approach" because it lacks details in some places where, as a hobbyist OS developer, I would have really liked some answers (especially in the low-level details of the memory manager).
• It's better than "Mac OS X Internals: A Systems Approach" because it doesn't overwhelm you with tens of thousands of utterly irrelevant details (<rant>Attention Amit Singh: I don't need to know how Open Firmware or the PPC calling convention work! They're obsolete already! I don't care much about BootX either, because IMO bootloaders are way less interesting than, say, schedulers or virtual memory managers or file systems! I shouldn't have to read through 600 pages just to get to the "good parts" (which the introduction says I won't understand unless I read the first five chapters in order)!!</rant>)

I hope that made some sense.

For those who have an irrational need to avoid all things Microsoft, pretend that this book is titled "Inside VMS" and read it anyway. It wouldn't be that far from the truth.

[AndrewAPrice]

http://books24x7.com have Inside Microsoft Windows 2000. I'm guessing it's basically the same book, except for the 2000 kernel? (Which is basically the next release of NT).

[Colonel Kernel]

http://books24x7.com have Inside Microsoft Windows 2000. I'm guessing it's basically the same book, except for the 2000 kernel? (Which is basically the next release of NT).

I believe so, although I haven't read it. There is actually an even newer version that covers XP and Windows Server 2003 as well, called "Windows Internals" I think.

[SpooK]

http://books24x7.com have Inside Microsoft Windows 2000. I'm guessing it's basically the same book, except for the 2000 kernel? (Which is basically the next release of NT).

I believe so, although I haven't read it. There is actually an even newer version that covers XP and Windows Server 2003 as well, called "Windows Internals" I think.

Yep, I got "Windows Internals" earlier this year and it is a pretty good read. Nothing much is revealed in the way of code but there is many thorough explanations as to the design and theory of the NT kernel.

Much of the text is your basic/semi-advanced OS design concepts (in my 6 years of OS development hindsight) but with more in-depth NT-specific concepts and solutions.

All-in-all, most of the NT kernel is what people already know in the OS dev world but with different "catchy" names for those same basic OS design concepts... yet it is a very good read and can help you organize your own thoughts.

[indiocolifa]

Very good book, I got "Windows Internals" 4th Edition and it's a good source for ideas. Good details without source code, which from my point of view it's good for catching concepts and techniques before digging into some coding. A must read for every OS developer or interested in the operating systems field.