Which edition of windows internals should I read?

Question

Hello,

I want to get into windows driver development. I heard from the community that before diving into driver development one must be familiar with windows internals that means one must read "Windows Internals by Mark Russinovich.

I'm going to buy this book today. Which edtition should I buy? 4th edition covers Windows XP & Windows 2003 where as 5th edition covers Windows Vista & windows server 2008.

I don't know in driver world how much difference this thing would make. How different are these two editions?

should I first read 4th edition & then come to 5th or should I directly dive into 5th?

Answer 1

The latest one of course :) Mark and company added all the latest information and addressed some errata.

Answer 2

Read the latest. However I do suggest reading Helen Custer's Inside NT as a primer. I merely suggest it as a great introcution to the OS. However it is very much out of date - but since it's a lightweight book I didn't think it would matter that much. Certainly I used it when I wrote drivers. However in those days it wasn't.

Answer 3

Since you mentioned you want to get into driver development, in addition to the Winternals book, this is a good one for learning driver development:
http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Microsoft-Windows-Driver-Model/dp/0735618038

Also, the documentation and sample code in the Windows Driver Kit is must-read.

Answer 4

Not an answer.

The book you are referring, "Microsoft Windows Internals" is the fourth edition of a book that was originally called "Inside Windows NT" (Microsoft Press, 1992), written by Helen Custer (prior to the initial release of Microsoft Windows NT 3.1). Inside Windows NT was the first book ever published about Windows NT and provided key insight into the architecture and design of the system.

Here is the little history of these books:

1. "Inside Windows NT", First Edition (Microsoft Press, 1992), by Helen Custer (Author), David N Cutler (Designer of Windows NT)

2. "Inside Windows NT", Second Edition (Microsoft Press, 1997) by David Solomon. It was updated to cover Windows NT 4.0 and had a greatly increased level of technical depth.

3. "Inside Windows 2000", Third Edition (Microsoft Press, 2000) was authored by David Solomon and Mark Russinovich.

4. "Microsoft Windows Internals, Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, and Windows 2000" Fourth Edition (Microsoft Press, 2000) by Mark E. Russinovich, David A. Solomon

5. "Windows Internals: Including Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista", Fifth Edition (Microsoft Press, June 17, 2009) by Mark Russinovich, David A. Solomon, Alex Ionescu

As about why should we care for older editions:

Here is an excellent comment by concernedoftunbridgewells

Older books like this are quite often a good intro to the basics, and in many cases the fundamentals are much the same now as they were then.

After a few generations, books often have to contain a large amount of supplementary material about the latest features, which bloats them and obscures the fundamentals. Reading a small concise book is often a good start, even if some of the material is out of date.

EDIT:

You may also be interested in "Windows Operating System Internals Curriculum Resource Kit"

Answer 5

Yes you want latest 5th edition which is still good for Windows 7/Windows 2008. Especially, if you are interested in driver development since there were major changes to driver development from 4th to 5th edition of book! I owned an older edition of the book while a lot of the stuff is the same i.e. processes using the windows debugger, etc. there is definitely some major changes in the newer editions so it's not like they just fixed the typos from earlier editions like other books.