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Unauthorized Windows 95 Update

This page last updated May 22, 1997

• My Web Review article on Microsoft's strange advertising campaign for ActiveX: "InactiveX: What you won't find in Hell's Kitchen".

• I'm starting to put together something I'm calling The "Undocumented" Bookstore, based on amazon.com's "associates program." The store features books on operating-system internals and undocumented features, plus related topics such as reverse engineering, intellectual property, interoperability and compatibility, innovation, antitrust, and the history of technology.

• Adding New System Services to the Windows NT Kernel by Prasad Dabak, Sandeep Phadke, and Milind Borate. This is a brief excerpt from their forthcoming book, Unauthorized Windows NT, to be published by O'Reilly.

• Differences Between NT Server and Workstation are Minimal: Registry Settings Used to Force Use of Microsoft Web Server

• Microsoft Deliberately Limiting NT Workstation 4.0 as a Web Server

• Windows Source 3 now available! Version 3 of Windows Source -- a disassembly toolkit for Windows that works with the famous "Sourcer" disassembler from V Communications -- now does Win32 (PE) executables for Win95 and WinNT, Win95 VxDs, etc. I wrote the first two versions of Windows Source, and then turned it over to Clive Turvey, who's done a great job. His web page also has some free utilities: VXDLIB, DUMPPE, and DUMPLX.

• NTCrash by Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell, from their excellent NT Internals site. The authors say: "This program will very quickly crash NT by just executing random system calls with garbage parameters into Win32K.SYS. It graphically demonstrates the instability introduced by Microsoft's quick move of the USER and GDI portions of Win32 into the kernel. This program has been used to isolate and identify 13 distinct Win32K.SYS functions that either lack parameter validation, or perform it incorrectly." Showing once again that you can have a successful system or a secure one, but not both.
  Also see their CPUHog, "a 5 line Windows program [which requires no special privileges!!] that will bring an NT system to its knees by setting itself to the highest priority allowable for non-privileged applications, and then sitting in an infinite while() loop. NT is hung so badly by this that it is impossible to even start Task Manager so that the program can be killed." The code is simply:

  SetThreadPriority( GetCurrentThread(),
  		THREAD_PRIORITY_TIME_CRITICAL );
  while(1);
  

• DUMPB, a program to massage Win32 disassembly listings generated by Microsoft's LINK /DUMPBIN /DISASM. Requires LINK.EXE and Clive Turvey's DUMPPE.EXE. If you downloaded DUMPB before December 13, and found it didn't work too well, please try it again. I've posted a version that fixes many problems with the original version.

• Inside the Windows 95 Registry. Includes cool new REGMON registry-monitoring utility by Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell.

• "Dirty Little Secrets about Windows 95": An excerpt from an important new book by Matt Pietrek, Windows 95 System Programming Secrets. The book is published by IDG Books, who also published my Unauthorized Windows 95 prior to my joining O'Reilly.

• SoftRAM 95: "False and Misleading": SoftRAM95 was probably the only real non-Microsoft success story related to Windows 95. The vendor, Syncronys Softcorp (SYCR), sold about 600,000 copies of this supposed "RAM compression" product. Its stock went from 3 cents to 32 dollars. In late 1995, an investigation by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) forced Syncronys to recall the product, the company has failed to issue a much-promised "upgrade," and now the FTC has charged Syncronys with "false and misleading" claims. Several independent examinations have concluded that the product does not even attempt to do what it is supposed to do. This isn't just another bug. This is a fascinating story, with many lessons for the PC software industry.

• NTFS File Redirector for DOS/Windows, version 1.1, by (who else?) Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell.
  What are the implications of this for NT security? In a white paper "Windows NT File System: Built for Data Security", Microsoft denies there are any implications: "Despite reports, this utility [NTFSDOS] does not affect the ability of the Windows NT Server operating system to secure critical business data. The availability of this utility does, however, underscore one of the most important and fundamental necessities of network security the need for physically securing server hardware." Uh, okay, if you say so.

• NT File Monitor by Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell. A nice complement to the Windows 95 File Monitor by Stan Mitchell.

• Can Microsoft Catch Up to the Internet? A Software Developer's Persective. An attempt by Andrew Schulman to figure out whether the Windows API is being eclipsed in importance by the Web.
• Part 2

• Windows and the Web: Which API Do You Want to Use Today?: Slides (using HTML, not PowerPoint) I prepared for a talk at the O'Reilly booth at Software Development (SD) 96. I'll probably rewrite this as a web article soon, but in the meantime here are the slides. Illustrates some interesting uses of URLs, has some C WinSock code, and a little Java code.

• Cool new VXDMON program by Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell. VXDMON uses the Pentium's cycle counter to provide performance and control-flow information and any and all exported Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) and Virtual Device Driver (VxD) services under Windows 95. The program is still a little rough, but it provides a never-before-seen view into how Windows works. This is a version with complete online help.

• Windows 95: What It Isn't, What It Is, Why It Matters: a lengthy online brochure describing the architecture of Windows 95, how it differs from Microsoft's description of that architecture, and how this difference can have real-world consequences for end users. In particular, Win95's "separate address spaces" aren't really separate. Surprisingly, this topic was not discussed at all in Unauthorized Windows 95.

• Two sections that were accidentally dropped from the "Industry Section" section of Unauthorized Windows 95:
  • Consolidation of the PC Software Industry
  • Windows 95: Like Toasting a Bagel?

• Inside the Windows 95 Registration Wizard: Computer espionage, benign record-keeping, or anti-competitive practice? Using Stan Mitchell's excellent FILEMON utility (a file-monitoring program and VxD for Windows 95, to appear in Stan's forthcoming book, Inside the Windows 95 File System) to look under the hood of RegWiz and ProdInv, Win95's controversial online-registration and "product inventory" software.

• Updates (source code and programs) to the book Unauthorized Windows 95

• Links to other articles at other sites: Windows 95; Windows Tools (information on disassemblers, debuggers, etc.); Intel; Internet; Internet tools; miscellaneous Microsoft Windows, DOS.

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