Undocumented Windows 2000 Secrets: A Programmer's Cookbook
In the days of DOS and Windows 3.x, several knowing authors wrote books about undocumented features about these operating systems - essential details for programmers accidentally or intentionally missing from the original Microsoft documentation. This tradition continued when Windows 3.11 evolved into Windows 95 and its successors. However, when the first usable Version of Windows NT (Version 3.5) surfaced in 1995, none of the renowned writers of "undocumented" books took any notice.It lasted until 1999, until the first "Undocumented Windows NT" book was finally published by Prasad Dabak, Sandeep Phadke, and Milind Borate from India. The next leap forward was Gary Nebbett's "Windows NT/2000 Native API Reference" (2000), comprehensively documenting an essential subset of the NT kernel's huge, but largely undocumented, programming interface. My book "Undocumented Windows 2000 Secrets" is intended to be one more piece in this mosaic.My main intention in writing this book was to lead the readers through some of the basic, but hidden, mechanisms of the Windows 2000 and NT 4.0 kernel with the help of detailed sample code. My point of view is that a programmer always gets the most thorough understanding of an operating system by experimenting with it. The sample programs discussed in my book and packed onto the book's companion CD should serve as starting points for further exploration, and the text surrounding them provides the necessary theoretical background needed to get started.I would be the happiest man on earth if my book would spur the inquiring minds of developers everywhere, kicking off an avalanche of research that unveils all mysteries that still surround most parts of the Windows NT/2000 kernel. I never believed that treating the operating system as a black box was a good programming paradigm. And I still don't believe it.