Undocumented Windows NT [With CDROM]

by Prasad Dabak, Milind Borate, Sandeep Phadke

Although Microsoft Windows NT is one of the most popular operating systems in the corporate world, no book has documented what actually goes on under the hood -- until now. Undocumented Windows NT dissects the Win32 interface, deconstructs the underlying APIs, and deciphers the Memory Management architecture to help you understand operations, fix flaws, and enhance performance. In this groundbreaking guide, three experts share what they've dug up...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0764545698
• ISBN13: 9780764545696
• Release Date: November 1999
• Publisher: Novell Press
• Length: 335 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 7.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

You will view Windows differently after this book

I have loved this book. It is much more easier to read than the more detailed book Windows Internals but still give you a good overall understanding on how Windows works. After having read this book, the cryptic access violation error messages suddenly made more sense. The most enlightning chapters of the book are the ones discussing how the OS manages the process memory space and how a process is launched. Do not get fooled thinking that because the book is on NT that its information is outdated. Not much has changed since and its content is still accuratly accurate.

Finally...

It took a long time until someone dared to write an "undocumented" book about Windows NT. For strange reasons, the most renowned authors of "undocumented" books totally ignored NT for a long time and mainly focused on Windows 9x. The author trio from Pune, India, finally filled this gap. Besides the chapters about Interrupt and Native API hooking, the most interesting part of this book is certainly chapter 8, which covers the LPC (Local Procedure Call) facility (i.e. NT's basic interprocess communication mechanism) in great depth. I'm not aware of a more comprehensive documentation of this topic. All three editions of "Inside Windows NT/2000" just lay out the basic facts, but Dabak et al. show how to put LPC to work with several code samples. Highly recommeded!

Great source of Windows NT extensibility mechanisms

The book is the first one that I've encountered that explains, with good working examples, how to fundamentally extend Windows NT functionality through new system services, software interrupts, and ring 0 code.It also provides good explanations of the virtual memory and LPC facilities, with very helpful specific code examples.The book does have a version 1.0 flavor to it. The editing and publishing are mediocre and there are many other areas of NT that I would love to see the authors apply their impressive investigative skills to.If you are interested in understanding as much about the internals of NT as anyone that doesn't have access to the NT source code can, this book is well worth examining.

Corrections to my review dated 16 March 2000

A week ago, I posted a review of _Undocumented Wndows NT_, a review that contains one factual error and one fallacious assumption which caused me to view the work in a worse light than I would otherwise have done.The error is in attributing the reverse-engineering of the KiSystemServiceTable mechanism to Nishad Herath. Nishad has done an excellent, and by all appearances independent, job, but I was now given proof that the authors got there first. Kudos goes to Dabak/Phadke/Borate, and I retract the implied statement that they are offering information they could have found on dejanews -- such information was not available when they wrote the chapter in question.The flawed assumption of mine was that the blurb on the cover, by which I judged _Undocumented Windows NT_, was written by the authors: it was not. The authors' summary can be found higher up on this page, and it does more accurately reflect the contents of the book. The mismatch between the expectations raised by the blurb and the actual contents caused me to give a lower rating than I would otherwise have given; I hope to correct the average by submitting this review with a corrected, higher, rating.Finally, I would like to point out a minor, but helpful detail: While the authors do not offer as much information on NT's native API as Gary Nebbett's _Windows NT/2000 Native API Reference_, which I mentioned in my earlier review, it must be pointed out that they provide a header file with the necessary function and structure declarations, something that is missing from the Nebbett book.Felix Kasza.

Compelete Reference about Hooking, Win32 Reverse Eng. ...

Good Book about Hooking, Win32 Reverse Eng. and something Undocumented action(?).... Well explain about NT system architecture.. If you find API Hooking book on NT.....(Not VxD Call) .. This book.. FOR YOU