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Ask Slashdot: Good Technical Guide To Windows 10?
An anonymous reader writes: Back 'in the day' you could easily find books on NT, Windows 2000, or Slackware that went into painstaking detail about every functional aspect of the operating system (think Slackware Unleashed). They covered the interplay between BIOS, boot sector, crash dumps, every command-line option, etc. Past about Win 2000 I fell way behind focusing on finishing my EE degree. Now when faced with a complex issue, I just end up at Google, but would prefer a good comprehensive book on recent Win8/Win10 architectures. Any suggestions? Are these books all but limited to course-prep now?
The Windows Internal books are really good for that kind of detail
Paul Thurrott has published a Field Guide to Windows 10 that you can purchase through his site at https://www.thurrott.com/store. He has been writhing Windows guides for a long time and i find them to be very helpful. With the ever changing nature of OS delivery these days, it is hard to keep current and so I think most gudes have migrated to the Internet. Another source is to look for books written by Mark Russinovich, I believe he is a fellow at Microsoft, but his books and software are highly regarded as well.
Missing Manual:
http://www.amazon.com/Windows-...
Microsoft Books:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/micros...
That book market no longer exists. The vast majority of books are exam prep now.
Now it's all about finding the right resources online.
A proper search targeted at technet.microsoft.com (for admin issues) or msdn.microsoft.com (for dev issues) will usually be helpful.
I've found technet to be more frequently helpful, and Stack Overflow or Stack Exchange are good alternatives to MSDN. Technet has an exhaustive, option-by-option descriptions of the modern CLI commands. This is the closest thing you'll probably find to those old books.
If you are interested in scripting, you should probably familiarize yourself with PowerShell, as it is far more powerful and flexible than the traditional Windows CLI.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
Hi there, It's a shame everyone is just telling you not to use it, instead of being somewhat helpful. I am but a simple sysadmin and am too much of a burnout to do any development work, but have you checked out Microsoft's online resources? It looks like the Microsoft Virtual Academy at least has some info on the subject: MSVA The SDK is available on Windows Dev Center -- I don't know what you've looked through yet, but I don't think there's going to be a silver bullet for this one. Try to hobble along with MS Virtual Academy and the Devel blogs until someone releases a book/guide with everything you need.
640k ought to be enough for anyone.
Today it is far more convenient to get this info from the internet from multiple sources. So there isn't much of a market in all encompassing technical books.
TechNet: Windows 10, for example.
With the broad based yet in depth material you are looking for, you will need several books. I know how you feel though, finding well written and laid out 800 - 1000+ page books that were written for experts is not as simple as it used to be. After first reading your question I went and took a look at a bookshelf I have containing my oldest tech books from fifteen or more years ago. You really can't find stuff like that anymore. I actually left out some Windows 10 books in my list below because 80 out of 800 pages being useful isn't worth it, at least not to me. So as a long time and frequent tech book buyer, here is this best I can come up with:
The first would be: Windows 10 Inside Out http://www.amazon.com/Windows-.... It's about 900 pages of too simple for you through very complex concepts and procedures as they apply to that platform. It sounds like you would skip quite a bit, but there is enough in there to make it worth it.
Then of course there is the Windows 10: The Missing Manual http://www.amazon.com/Windows-... This is another example where you will likely skip over a lot of material but the good stuff is in fact pretty good.
Overwhelmingly above and beyond I want to recommend the Windows Internals series. However, I cannot find anything specific to Windows 10. As far as Windows 8 is concerned, this series is a stop here and buy this now kinda thing. If someone else can point in the right direction for Windows 10 coverage by this series, I myself would be grateful.
Once you've covered broad based expertise which likely won't take you long, you really need to start thinking along the lines of studying a few highly specific topics.
Oh, and then for either broad or focused based learning there is always the official MS Press series. I'm always a bit leery of that series though. I never purchase an MS Press book, especially recently released, unless I can find a substantial number of reviews across multiple sites for any one book. IMHO MS Press is the worst when it comes to publishing materials riddled with factually incorrect information, and reviews are the best way to get a heads up. Otherwise I think they make some of the greatest tech books. Sorry for not having a perfectly straight answer.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Go fuck yourself. If Microsoft wants to be hostile and aggressive about forcing Windows 10 on to everyone, I say we should be equally hostile and aggressive at getting people to use anything but Windows 10.
Go buy a Mac! Go install Linux or BSD! Grab Haiku and give them a hand at making a new BeOS! Contribute to Wine and/or ReactOS! Use an earlier version of Windows and disable updates!
Don't allow yourself to fall for the Windows 10 malware scam. It's *your* PC, take control of it!