Microsoft Windows Internals, Fourth Edition: Chapter 4: Management Mechanisms

Get a glimpse inside "Microsoft Windows Internals, Fourth Edition," with this excerpt from Chapter 4, "Management Mechanisms." Click here for the chapter download or to purchase the book.

Summary: Delve inside the Windows kernel with noted internals experts Mark Russinovich and David Solomon, in collaboration with the Microsoft Windows product development team. This classic guide -- fully updated for Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, and Windows 2000, including 64-bit extensions -- describes the architecture and internals of the Windows operating system. You'll find hands-on experiments you can use to experience Windows internal behavior firsthand, along with advanced troubleshooting information to help you keep your systems running smoothly and efficiently.

Chapter 4 describes three fundamental mechanisms in Microsoft Windows that are critical to the management and configuration of the system:

• The registry: This section provides an overview of the registry structure, a discussion of the data type it supports, and a brief tour of the key information Windows maintains in the registry.
• Services: This section covers service applications, service accounts and the operations of the service control manager.
• Windows Management Instrumentation: This section describes in detail fundamentals of Windows new management mechanism, Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI).

This chapter download from "Microsoft Windows Internals, Fourth Edition" by Mark E. Russinovich and David A. Solomon, is printed with permission from Microsoft Press, Copyright 2004.