Introduction

 Windows OS is computer OS developed by

Microsoft Corporation to run PCs.
 Microsoft is an American Company which was
founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1975.
 Windows provides GUI, virtual memory
management , multitasking and support for
many devices.
 History of Windows
• MS-DOS (1981)
• Windows 1.0 – 2.0 (1985-1992)
• Windows 3.0 – 3.1 (1990-1994)
• Windows 95 (June 1998)
• Windows 98 (June 1998)
• Windows NT 3.1 – 4.0 (1993 – 1996)
• Windows 2000 (February 2000)
• Windows ME – Millennium Edition (Sep 2000)
• Windows XP (Oct 2001)
• Windows Vista (Nov 2006)
• Windows 7 (Oct 2009)
• Windows 8 (Aug 2012)
• Windows 10 (July 2015)
 MS-DOS (1981)
• Developed by Microsoft for IBM.
• A user can interact with this OS only through
command prompt.
• There are several commands with options are
provided for furnishing the computer related
tasks.
 Windows 1.0-2.0 (1985-1992)
• Instead of typing MS-DOS commands, Windows 1.0
allowed user to point and click to access the windows.
• You can display the contents of electronic folders and
files with the click of a mouse button, rather than
typing commands and directory paths at a text prompt.
 Windows 2.0 was designed for the Intel 286 processor
(16 – bit microprocessor).
 This version added desktop icons , keyboard shortcuts
and improved graphics support.
 Windows 3.0 – 3.1 (1990 – 1994)
• It allowed better icons , performance and advanced
graphics with 16 colors designed for Intel 386 processors.
• It supports standard “look and feel” of Microsoft Windows
for many years to come.
• This included Program Manager , File Manager and Print
Manager and games.
• Microsoft released Windows 3.1 in 1992 with few changes.
 Windows 95 (1995)
• As the name implies, Windows 95 was arrived
in August 1995.
• It bought the first ever start button and start
menu.
• It supported 32 – bit applications.
 Windows 98 ( June 1998)
• Windows 98 bought with it IE 4 (Internet
Explorer 4).
• It supported a number of new technologies.
 Windows NT 3.1 – 4.0 (1993-1996)
• Windows NT – 32 bit OS that supports
multitasking.
• It is processor independent , multiprocessing
and multi – user OS.
• There are two versions of Windows NT :
Windows NT Server and Windows NT
Workstation.
 Windows 2000 (February 2000)
• It is abbreviated as “W2K”.
• Windows 2000 is an operating system for business
desktop and laptop systems to run software
applications , connect to internet and intranet sites,
and access files, printers, and network resources.
• There are 4 versions of Windows 2000 : Professional (
for business desktop and laptop systems), Server(both
Web Server and an office server), Advanced Server (for
line of business applications) and Datacenter Server
(for high traffic computer networks).
 Windows ME – Millennium Edition
(Sep 2000)
• Windows ME was an update to the Windows
98 core and included some features of the
windows 2000 OS .
• It also removed the “boot in DOS” option.
• This was the last windows to be based on MS-
DOS.
 Windows XP (Oct 2001)
• Windows XP is based on Windows 2000 kernel
; giving user a more stable and reliable
environment than previous versions of
windows.
• There are two versions of Windows : Home
and Professional.
Windows Vista (November 2006)
• Windows vista offered an advancement in
security , performance , ease of deployment
and manageability over Windows XP.
• It has capabilities to detect hardware
problems before they occur.
• Faster start-up time.
• Low power consumption.
• New sleep state.
 Windows 7 (October 2009)
• Improved performance and start-up time.
• It bought with it IE 8 (Internet Explorer 8) and
multi-touch support.
• Improved security.
• It was intended to fix all the problems faced
by Vista.
 Windows 8 (August 2012)
• Windows 8 is a completely redesigned OS.
• It was designed with touch screen use in mind.
• Start up in a matter of seconds rather than in minutes.
• Windows 8 replaced traditional “MS-DOS look and
feel” with a new “Metro” design system interface.
• The Metro user interface consists of “Start screen” and
“Live Tiles”.
• Windows 8 supports both x86 PCs and ARM
processors.
 Windows 10 ( July 2015)
• Fast start up and resume, built in security.
• Return of the Start Menu , New task menu ,
central notification screen, Anti key logging
support, advanced search facility and many
more features.
 Programming Windows
• Win32 programming subsystem introduced as a part of
NTbased system and the modern WinRT that was
introduced in Windows 8.
• Main feature is NTOS kernel mode program which uses the
same system call interface upon which the OS was built on.
• It’s not open source.
• It has Modern Software Development Kit which includes
WinRT API.
• The libraries implement high level OS functions that uses
inter-process communication using the subsystem.
• Calls of subsystem takes place in kernel mode.
 The Native NT Application Programming
Interface
• In this API, calls are available to create new kernel
mode objects or to access existing ones.
• Every call creating or opening an object returns a
result called handle to the caller.
• Handles are specific to the process that created
them.
• Following table provides a list of some of the
common categories of kernel-mode objects
supported by the kernel in Windows:
 The Win32 Application Programming Interface
• The function calls are called as Win32 API.
• Most of the functionality of NT APIs is available
through the Win32 API.
• Some Win32 calls take path names and NT calls
use handles.
• The table below shows the Win32 API calls and
corresponding native NT API calls:
 The Windows Registry
• Windows Registry is used to store information that is necessary to
configure the system for one or more users, application, hardware
etc.
• This includes information such as profiles of each users, apps
installed on PC, what type of documents that can be created and so
on.
• A registry stores a group of keys, subkeys and values in the registry
that has a set of supporting files that contains backups of its data.
• The supporting files for all except HKEY_CURRENT_USER are in the
%SystemRoot%\System32\Config folder on Windows.
 Operating System Structure
• Windows OS is divided into user mode and kernel mode.
• The Virtual Memory, also known as virtual RAM, allows
hard disk space to be used as if it were additional memory.
• The kernel mode in Windows is comprised of the Windows
Executive, which includes the Executive Services, the
kernel, and the hardware abstraction layer(HAL).
 Booting Windows
• Booting is the process of starting fresh(Cold Booting)
or resetting (Warm Booting) the computer.
• When you start your PC, BIOS Initialization starts.
• Then runs a Power On Self Test (POST) which ends
when BIOS detects a valid system disk.
• Then reads the Master Boot Record from it and then
opens Booting.exe.
• This finds and starts Winload.exe which begins the
OSloader phase.
• It is necessary to update BIOS version and hardware
components to keep computer optimized.
• OSloader then loads the system registry hive and
additional drvies that are marked as BOOT_START into
memory.
Implementation of the object Manager
• The Object Manager is the Executive
subsystem,which provides a resource
management support infrastructure tht all other
NT Executive subsystem is dependent on.
• Handles:The handle is an abstraction which
hides a real memory address from the API
user,allowing the system to reorganize physical
memory transparently to the program.
• The Object Namespace:To protect named object
from unauthorized access,an object namespace
is used.
 Subsystems,DLLs,and User-Mode
Services
• The subsystems are the way of supporting
multiple operating system with the same
underlying software in kernal mode.
• A second key aspect of the user-mode design of
windows is Dynamic link library(DLLs),which is a
library that contain code and data that can be
used by more than one program at the same
time.
• The user mode services are not having ability to
directly access hardware or reference memory.
 PROCESSES AND THREADS IN WINDOWS
• A process is nothing but an executing program which contains its own
independent virtual address sopace with both code and data,protected from
other process.
• The windows thread is the basic executable unit.Threads are scheduled on the
basis of the usual factors such as availability of resource(CPUs and physical
memory).

• Jobs and fibres

The jobs are used for resource management as once a process is in a job,all
processes threads in those process create will also be in the job.
The fibers are created by allocating a stack and a user mode fiber data structure for
storing registers and data associated with the fiber.

• Thread pools and user-mode scheduling

The thread pool is a facility that provide a better abstraction for certain types of
programs.
The implementation of UMS(User-Mode scheduling) has three key elements.
1.User-mode switching
2.Re-entering the user-mode scheduler
3.System-call completion
 Job,Process,Thread,and fiber
Management API Calls
• Interprocess Communication(IPC)
It allows the exchange of data between
processes.
• Synchronization
Windows provides synchronization
mechanisms such as
semaphores,mutexes,critical regions ,and
events.
Implementation of Process aand
Threads
•
MEMORY
Virtual Address Allocation
MANAGEMENT
• Each page of virtual address can be in on of the three states:
1.Invalid
2.Reserved
3.Committed
• Pagefiles
The backing store to committed pages which are not being mapped to specific files uses the
pagefiles.
Memory-Management system calls
 Implementation of Memory
Management
• Page Fault Handling
A page fault is a type of interrupt called trap,raised by
computer hardware when a running program accesses a
memory page that is mapped into the virtual address space
but not actually loaded into main memory.
• The Page Replacement Algorithm
1.Lots of memory available
2.Memory Getting Tight
3.Memory is tight
• Physical Memory Management
When a physical is no longer mapped by the page table in
any process it goes onto one of three list:
1.Free
2.Modified
3.Standby