A comprehensive analysis of the internal design and operation of the Windows Vista operating system.

Level

Intermediate

Audience

Applications developers; systems software developers; device driver developers; system administrators; system integrators; hardware OEMs; I.T. support personnel

Description

In this seminar you will learn the “internals” of the most important areas of the Windows Vista operating system. All modern operating systems perform variations of the same core functions; in this seminar we examine how those functions are implemented by Vista; how its implementation is similar in some ways - but different in others - to other systems and other versions of Windows; and, most importantly, the implications of these details on the system’s behavior, on the behavior of applications and device drivers.

While many of the core operating system features and functions visible to users have remained unchanged since Windows 2000, Windows Vista has made substantial improvements in the implementation of almost every major area of the operating system.

We examine several key parts of the system, including the security infrastructure (BitLocker, DEP, EFS, Integrity Levels, Privilege Isolation, etc.), thread scheduling, paging, virtual memory mapping, and the management of physical memory, in thorough detail.

This information is vital for application developers, who need to know the impact on the system of various design approaches and of specific APIs – especially regarding security; for system administrators, who need to be able to properly configure Windows systems and to see and understand the effects of their decisions; for anyone attempting support, performance optimization, or troubleshooting on Windows operating systems; and for device driver writers. In particular, we cover all of the key operating system mechanisms and principles that are relevant to device driver design.

You will also learn how the operation and performance of each system mechanism we describe is reflected in the various system monitoring tools. And while this is not specifically a debugging or troubleshooting seminar, the information here is essential for any type of problem analysis.

With the removal of DOS compatibility, the installation and booting of Windows Vista is now quite different.  We will look at how Vista is packaged, installed, and boots.

In addition to Vista being more secure, it is also more robust than previous Windows versions, so we will examine the features and mechanisms that make Vista more much more reliable than past operating systems.

You will also learn how the operation and performance of each system mechanism we describe is reflected in the various system monitoring tools. And while this is not specifically a debugging or troubleshooting seminar, the information here is essential for any type of problem analysis.

This course contains some of the same material covered in our INT201: Windows Internals class for Windows 2000, Windows XP or Windows Server 2003, but does not specifically address the differences between the various Windows versions.

Topics

• Tools and terminology

• System architecture overview

• Installation and booting

• Program execution environment

• Backwards compatibility

• Kernel mode components

• Environment subsystems and user-to-kernel call implementation

• Supporting the Windows GUI

• Security components and functions

• The Windows scheduler

• The memory manager

• I/O subsystem

• File system cache

• Reliability features

• Networking

• 64-bit features

Prerequisites

Experience using or administering Windows Vista, and familiarity with basic operating system concepts

Windows versions

Windows Vista and Longhorn

Duration and formats

5 days with labs
3 days lecture only

Labs

We strongly recommend the hands-on labs version of this seminar:

As in all of our seminars, we have carefully designed a series of demonstrations, lab exercises, and problems that illustrate, help present, and build on the information presented. For this seminar, we follow nearly every point discussion of an operating system mechanism, principle, or concept with a lab exercise. We have you exercise or manipulate the part of the system described, and then examine displays that confirm the expected results. We also have you look for interactions with, and effects on, the rest of the system. This of course results in greatly increased comprehension and retention of the material.

In the lecture-only version, the lab exercises are replaced with brief demonstrations by the instructor.

Short formats

Though not really a "short form," we do offer INT255, Windows Vista Internals Update, for those already familiar with Windows operating system internals from previous versions.