If you want to learn Latin, Textkit is the place to go. They have lots of out-of-copyright books to download for free, and helpful forums. I recommend "Latin for beginners" by Benjamin L. D'Ooge.
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/source/filemon.s html Filemon shows all filesystem access, so you can see which files programs are accessing. I have found it very useful in diagnosing software problems and fighting spyware.
Regmon
One of the reasons for the OS redetecting hardware is that relying on the BIOS is less portable, and sometimes BIOS has limitations which the OS doesn't.
There really is a secret "API" in windows NT/2K/XP.
It's called the native API, and operates at the OS level, much like system calls in linux. It provides functionality for virtual memory, threads, processes, synchronization, files, and so on.
The Win32 API is a wrapper above this API. This is partly because Windows NT was designed to support different APIs. Many functions in the Win32 API have a one-to-one mapping with native functions. This is a good OS design feature, not a secret conspiracy by evil washington overlords.
The native API is important for very low level stuff such as driver development, but is not necessary nor desirable IMO for application development. SQL Server is an application, but many enterprise-level databases have special file access or filesystem level things built in for performance, so I wouldn't be surprised if MS used the native API in SQL Server. But I would be quite surprised if they used it in applications like word or media player.
Slashdot Mirror
If you want to learn Latin, Textkit is the place to go. They have lots of out-of-copyright books to download for free, and helpful forums. I recommend "Latin for beginners" by Benjamin L. D'Ooge.
Here are some good tools of their that I use frequently
Autoruns
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/autorun s.shtml shows a complete list of programs that start up automatically when windows starts.
Filemon
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/source/filemon.s html Filemon shows all filesystem access, so you can see which files programs are accessing. I have found it very useful in diagnosing software problems and fighting spyware.
Regmon
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/source/regmon.sh tml Like filemon, but for registry access. Shows keys being read and created.
Pagedefrag
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/pagedef rag.shtml Defrags the registry hive (most of the registry is stored on disk but is not typically defragmented by many tools) and paging file.
Also many others here
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/utilities.shtml
IMHO any windows admin should have this stuff installed. Many of the utils come with source code.
One of the reasons for the OS redetecting hardware is that relying on the BIOS is less portable, and sometimes BIOS has limitations which the OS doesn't.
It's called the native API, and operates at the OS level, much like system calls in linux. It provides functionality for virtual memory, threads, processes, synchronization, files, and so on.
The Win32 API is a wrapper above this API. This is partly because Windows NT was designed to support different APIs. Many functions in the Win32 API have a one-to-one mapping with native functions. This is a good OS design feature, not a secret conspiracy by evil washington overlords.
The native API is important for very low level stuff such as driver development, but is not necessary nor desirable IMO for application development. SQL Server is an application, but many enterprise-level databases have special file access or filesystem level things built in for performance, so I wouldn't be surprised if MS used the native API in SQL Server. But I would be quite surprised if they used it in applications like word or media player.
See, for example, Windows NT/2000 Native API Reference by Gary Nebbett8 701996/104-0340249-2815171?v=glance on amazon
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/157
A good source of info about this topic is sysinternals' article, inside the Native API at http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/info/ntdll.shtml