Module 7

Windows 7

Windows 7
History
Design Principles
System Components

Environmental Subsystems
File system
Networking
Programmer Interface

Windows 7

32-bit preemptive multitasking operating system for Intel microprocessors

Key goals for the system:
portability
security
POSIX compliance
multiprocessor support
extensibility
international support
compatibility with MS-DOS and MS-Windows applications.
Uses a micro-kernel architecture
Available in six client versions, Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium,
Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate. With the exception of Starter edition
(32-bit only) all are available in both 32-bit and 64-bit.
Available in three server versions (all 64-bit only), Standard, Enterprise and
Datacenter

History
In 1988, Microsoft decided to develop a new technology (NT)

portable operating system that supported both the OS/2 and

POSIX APIs
Originally, NT was supposed to use the OS/2 API as its native

environment but during development NT was changed to use

the Win32 API, reflecting the popularity of Windows 3.0.

Design Principles

Extensibility layered architecture

Executive, which runs in protected mode, provides the basic

system services

On top of the executive, several server subsystems operate in

user mode

Modular structure allows additional environmental subsystems to

be added without affecting the executive

Portability Windows 7 can be moved from one hardware

architecture to another with relatively few changes

Written in C and C++

Processor-specific portions are written in assembly language for a

given processor architecture (small amount of such code).

Platform-dependent code is isolated in a dynamic link library

(DLL) called the hardware abstraction layer (HAL)

Design Principles (Cont.)

Reliability Windows 7 uses hardware protection for virtual

memory, and software protection mechanisms for operating

system resources
Compatibility applications that follow the IEEE 1003.1 (POSIX)

standard can be complied to run on 7 without changing the source

code
Performance Windows 7 subsystems can communicate with

one another via high-performance message passing

Preemption of low priority threads enables the system to

respond quickly to external events

Designed for symmetrical multiprocessing

International support supports different locales via the national

language support (NLS) API

Windows 7 Architecture
Layered system of module
Protected mode hardware abstraction layer (HAL),

kernel, executive
User mode collection of subsystems

Environmental subsystems emulate different operating

systems

Protection subsystems provide security functions

Depiction of 7 Architecture

System Components Kernel

Foundation for the executive and the subsystems
Never paged out of memory; execution is never preempted
Four main responsibilities:

thread scheduling

interrupt and exception handling

low-level processor synchronization

recovery after a power failure

Kernel is object-oriented, uses two sets of objects

dispatcher objects control dispatching and synchronization

(events, mutants, mutexes, semaphores, threads and
timers)

control objects (asynchronous procedure calls, interrupts,

power notify, power status, process and profile objects)

Kernel Process and Threads

The process has a virtual memory address space, information

(such as a base priority), and an affinity for one or more

processors.
Threads are the unit of execution scheduled by the kernels

dispatcher.
Each thread has its own state, including a priority, processor

affinity, and accounting information.

A thread can be one of six states: ready, standby, running,

waiting, transition, and terminated.

Kernel Scheduling
The dispatcher uses a 32-level priority scheme to determine

the order of thread execution.

Priorities are divided into two classes

The real-time class contains threads with priorities

ranging from 16 to 31

The variable class contains threads having priorities

from 0 to 15

Characteristics of Windows 7s priority strategy

Trends to give very good response times to interactive

threads that are using the mouse and windows

Enables I/O-bound threads to keep the I/O devices busy

Complete-bound threads soak up the spare CPU cycles

in the background

Kernel Scheduling (Cont.)

Scheduling can occur when a thread enters the ready or wait

state, when a thread terminates, or when an application

changes a threads priority or processor affinity
Real-time threads are given preferential access to the CPU;

but 7 does not guarantee that a real-time thread will start to

execute within any particular time limit .

This is known as soft realtime.

Windows 7 Interrupt Request Levels

Kernel Trap Handling

The kernel provides trap handling when exceptions and

interrupts are generated by hardware of software.

Exceptions that cannot be handled by the trap handler are

handled by the kernel's exception dispatcher.

The interrupt dispatcher in the kernel handles interrupts by

calling either an interrupt service routine (such as in a device

driver) or an internal kernel routine.
The kernel uses spin locks that reside in global memory to

achieve multiprocessor mutual exclusion.

Executive Object Manager

Windows 7 uses objects for all its services and entities; the

object manger supervises the use of all the objects

Generates an object handle

Checks security

Keeps track of which processes are using each object

Objects are manipulated by a standard set of methods, namely

create, open, close, delete, query name, parse

and security.

Executive Naming Objects

The Windows 7 executive allows almost any object to be given

a name, which may be either permanent or temporary.

Exceptions are process, thread and some others object types.
Object names are structured like file path names in MS-DOS

and UNIX.
Windows 7 implements a symbolic link object, which is similar

to symbolic links in UNIX that allow multiple nicknames or

aliases to refer to the same file.
A process gets an object handle by creating an object by

opening an existing one, by receiving a duplicated handle from

another process, or by inheriting a handle from a parent
process.
Each object is protected by an access control list.

Executive Virtual Memory Manager

The design of the VM manager assumes that the underlying

hardware supports virtual to physical mapping a paging

mechanism, transparent cache coherence on multiprocessor
systems, and virtual addressing aliasing.
The VM manager in Windows 7 uses a page-based

management scheme with a page size of 4 KB.

The Windows 7 VM manager uses a two step process to

allocate memory

The first step reserves a portion of the processs address

space

The second step commits the allocation by assigning

space in the systems paging file(s)

Virtual-Memory Layout

Virtual Memory Manager (Cont.)

The virtual address translation in Windows 7 uses several data

structures
Each process has a page directory that contains 1024 page
directory entries of size 4 bytes.

Each page directory entry points to a page table which

contains 1024 page table entries (PTEs) of size 4 bytes.
Each PTE points to a 4 KB page frame in physical memory.
A 10-bit integer can represent all the values form 0 to 1023,
therefore, can select any entry in the page directory, or in a page
table.
This property is used when translating a virtual address pointer
to a bye address in physical memory.
A page can be in one of six states: valid, zeroed, free standby,
modified and bad.

Virtual-to-Physical Address Translation

10 bits for page directory entry, 20 bits for page table entry, and

12 bits for byte offset in page

Page File Page-Table Entry

5 bits for page protection, 20 bits for page frame address, 4 bits to
select a paging file, and 3 bits that describe the page state. V = 0

Executive Process Manager

Provides services for creating, deleting, and using threads

and processes
Issues such as parent/child relationships or process

hierarchies are left to the particular environmental

subsystem that owns the process.

Executive Local Procedure Call Facility

The LPC passes requests and results between client and server

processes within a single machine.

In particular, it is used to request services from the various

Windows 7 subsystems.
When a LPC channel is created, one of three types of message

passing techniques must be specified.

First type is suitable for small messages, up to 256 bytes;

port's message queue is used as intermediate storage, and
the messages are copied from one process to the other.

Second type avoids copying large messages by pointing to

a shared memory section object created for the channel.

Third method, called quick LPC was used by graphical

display portions of the Win32 subsystem.

Executive I/O Manager

The I/O manager is responsible for

file systems
cache management
device drivers
network drivers
Keeps track of which installable file systems are loaded, and
manages buffers for I/O requests
Works with VM Manager to provide memory-mapped file I/O
Controls the Windows 7 cache manager, which handles
caching for the entire I/O system
Supports both synchronous and asynchronous operations,
provides time outs for drivers, and has mechanisms for one
driver to call another

File I/O

Executive Security Reference Monitor

The object-oriented nature of Windows 7 enables the use of a

uniform mechanism to perform runtime access validation and

audit checks for every entity in the system.
Whenever a process opens a handle to an object, the security

reference monitor checks the processs security token and the

objects access control list to see whether the process has the
necessary rights.

Executive Plug-and-Play Manager

Plug-and-Play (PnP) manager is used to recognize and

adapt to changes in the hardware configuration.

When new devices are added (for example, PCI or USB),

the PnP manager loads the appropriate driver.

The manager also keeps track of the resources used by

each device.

Environmental Subsystems
User-mode processes layered over the native Windows 7

executive services to enable 7 to run programs developed for

other operating system.
Windows 7 uses the Win32 subsystem as the main operating

environment; Win32 is used to start all processes.

It also provides all the keyboard, mouse and graphical

display capabilities.

MS-DOS environment is provided by a Win32 application called

the virtual dos machine (VDM), a user-mode process that is

paged and dispatched like any other Windows 7 thread.

Environmental Subsystems (Cont.)

16-Bit Windows Environment:

Provided by a VDM that incorporates Windows on Windows

Provides the Windows 3.1 kernel routines and sub routines

for window manager and GDI functions

The POSIX subsystem is designed to run POSIX applications

following the POSIX.1 standard which is based on the UNIX

model.

Environmental Subsystems (Cont.)

OS/2 subsystems runs OS/2 applications

Logon and Security Subsystems authenticates users logging

on to Windows 7 systems

Users are required to have account names and

passwords.

The authentication package authenticates users

whenever they attempt to access an object in the system.

Windows 7 uses Kerberos as the default authentication

package

File System
The fundamental structure of the Windows 7 file system (NTFS)

is a volume

Created by the Windows 7 disk administrator utility

Based on a logical disk partition

May occupy a portions of a disk, an entire disk, or span

across several disks

All metadata, such as information about the volume, is stored in

a regular file
NTFS uses clusters as the underlying unit of disk allocation

A cluster is a number of disk sectors that is a power of two

Because the cluster size is smaller than for the 16-bit FAT
file system, the amount of internal fragmentation is reduced

File System Internal Layout

NTFS uses logical cluster numbers (LCNs) as disk addresses
A file in NTFS is not a simple byte stream, as in MS-DOS or

UNIX, rather, it is a structured object consisting of attributes

Every file in NTFS is described by one or more records in an

array stored in a special file called the Master File Table (MFT)
Each file on an NTFS volume has a unique ID called a file

reference.

64-bit quantity that consists of a 48-bit file number and a

16-bit sequence number

Can be used to perform internal consistency checks

The NTFS name space is organized by a hierarchy of

directories; the index root contains the top level of the B+ tree

File System Recovery

All file system data structure updates are performed inside

transactions that are logged.

Before a data structure is altered, the transaction writes a

log record that contains redo and undo information.

After the data structure has been changed, a commit

record is written to the log to signify that the transaction
succeeded.

After a crash, the file system data structures can be

restored to a consistent state by processing the log
records.

File System Recovery (Cont.)

This scheme does not guarantee that all the user file data can

be recovered after a crash, just that the file system data

structures (the metadata files) are undamaged and reflect
some consistent state prior to the crash.
The log is stored in the third metadata file at the beginning of

the volume.
The logging functionality is provided by the Windows 7 log file

service.

File System Security

Security of an NTFS volume is derived from the Windows 7

object model.
Each file object has a security descriptor attribute stored in

this MFT record.

This attribute contains the access token of the owner of the

file, and an access control list that states the access

privileges that are granted to each user that has access to
the file.

Volume Management and Fault Tolerance

FtDisk, the fault tolerant disk driver for Windows 7, provides

several ways to combine multiple SCSI disk drives into one

logical volume
Logically concatenate multiple disks to form a large logical

volume, a volume set

Interleave multiple physical partitions in round-robin fashion to

form a stripe set (also called RAID level 0, or disk striping)

Variation: stripe set with parity, or RAID level 5

Disk mirroring, or RAID level 1, is a robust scheme that uses a

mirror set two equally sized partitions on tow disks with

identical data contents
To deal with disk sectors that go bad, FtDisk, uses a
hardware technique called sector sparing and NTFS uses a
software technique called cluster remapping

Volume Set On Two Drives

Stripe Set on Two Drives

Stripe Set With Parity on Three Drives

Mirror Set on Two Drives

File System Compression

To compress a file, NTFS divides the files data into compression

units, which are blocks of 16 contiguous clusters.

For sparse files, NTFS uses another technique to save space.

Clusters that contain all zeros are not actually allocated or

stored on disk.

Instead, gaps are left in the sequence of virtual cluster

numbers stored in the MFT entry for the file.

When reading a file, if a gap in the virtual cluster numbers is

found, NTFS just zero-fills that portion of the callers buffer.

File System Reparse Points

A reparse point returns an error code when accessed. The

reparse data tells the I/O manager what to do next.

Reparse points can be used to provide the functionality of

UNIX mounts.
Reparse points can also be used to access files that have

been moved to offline storage.

Networking
Windows 7 supports both peer-to-peer and client/server

networking; it also has facilities for network management.

To describe networking in Windows 7, we refer to two of the

internal networking interfaces:

NDIS (Network Device Interface Specification) Separates

network adapters from the transport protocols so that either
can be changed without affecting the other.

TDI (Transport Driver Interface) Enables any session layer

component to use any available transport mechanism.

Windows 7 implements transport protocols as drivers that can be

loaded and unloaded from the system dynamically.

Networking Protocols
The server message block (SMB) protocol is used to send I/O

requests over the network. It has four message types:

1. Session control
2.

File

3.

Printer

4.

Message

The network basic Input/Output system (NetBIOS) is a hardware

abstraction interface for networks

Used to:

Establish logical names on the network

Establish logical connections of sessions between two

logical names on the network

Support reliable data transfer for a session via NetBIOS

requests or SMBs

Networking Protocols (Cont.)

Windows 7 uses the TCP/IP Internet protocol version 4 and

version 6 to connect to a wide variety of operating systems

and hardware platforms.
PPTP (Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol) is used to

communicate between Remote Access Server modules

running on Windows 7 machines that are connected over the
Internet.
The Data Link Control protocol (DLC) is used to access IBM

mainframes and HP printers that are directly connected to the

network (possible on 32-bit only versions using unsigned
drivers).

Networking Dist. Processing Mechanisms

Windows 7 supports distributed applications via named NetBIOS,

named pipes and mailslots, Windows Sockets, Remote

Procedure Calls (RPC), and Network Dynamic Data Exchange
(NetDDE).
NetBIOS applications can communicate over the network using

TCP/IP.
Named pipes are connection-oriented messaging mechanism

that are named via the uniform naming convention (UNC).

Mailslots are a connectionless messaging mechanism that are

used for broadcast applications, such as for finding components

on the network.
Winsock, the windows sockets API, is a session-layer interface

that provides a standardized interface to many transport

protocols that may have different addressing schemes.

Distributed Processing Mechanisms (Cont.)

The Windows 7 RPC mechanism follows the widely-used

Distributed Computing Environment standard for RPC messages,

so programs written to use Windows 7 RPCs are very portable.

RPC messages are sent using NetBIOS, or Winsock on

TCP/IP networks, or named pipes on LAN Manager networks.

Windows 7 provides the Microsoft Interface Definition

Language to describe the remote procedure names,
arguments, and results.

Networking Redirectors and Servers

In Windows 7, an application can use the Windows 7 I/O API

to access files from a remote computer as if they were local,

provided that the remote computer is running an MS-NET
server.
A redirector is the client-side object that forwards I/O requests

to remote files, where they are satisfied by a server.

For performance and security, the redirectors and servers run

in kernel mode.

Access to a Remote File

The application calls the I/O manager to request that a file be

opened (we assume that the file name is in the standard UNC
format).
The I/O manager builds an I/O request packet.
The I/O manager recognizes that the access is for a remote file,

and calls a driver called a Multiple Universal Naming Convention

Provider (MUP).
The MUP sends the I/O request packet asynchronously to all

registered redirectors.
A redirector that can satisfy the request responds to the MUP

To avoid asking all the redirectors the same question in the

future, the MUP uses a cache to remember with redirector
can handle this file.

Access to a Remote File (Cont.)

The redirector sends the network request to the remote system.
The remote system network drivers receive the request and

pass it to the server driver.

The server driver hands the request to the proper local file

system driver.
The proper device driver is called to access the data.
The results are returned to the server driver, which sends the

data back to the requesting redirector.

Networking Domains
NT uses the concept of a domain to manage global access rights

within groups.
A domain is a group of machines running NT server that share a

common security policy and user database.

Windows 7 provides three models of setting up trust relationships

One way, A trusts B

Two way, transitive, A trusts B, B trusts C so A, B, C trust

each other

Crosslink allows authentication to bypass hierarchy to cut

down on authentication traffic.

Name Resolution in TCP/IP Networks

On an IP network, name resolution is the process of converting

a computer name to an IP address

e.g., www.bell-labs.com resolves to 135.104.1.14
Windows 7 provides several methods of name resolution:

Windows Internet Name Service (WINS)

broadcast name resolution

domain name system (DNS)

a host file

an LMHOSTS file

Name Resolution (Cont.)

WINS consists of two or more WINS servers that maintain a

dynamic database of name to IP address bindings, and client

software to query the servers.
WINS uses the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol

(DHCP), which automatically updates address configurations

in the WINS database, without user or administrator
intervention.

Programmer Interface Access to Kernel Obj.

A process gains access to a kernel object named XXX by calling

the CreateXXX function to open a handle to XXX; the handle is

unique to that process.
A handle can be closed by calling the CloseHandle function; the
system may delete the object if the count of processes using the
object drops to 0.
Windows 7 provides three ways to share objects between

processes

A child process inherits a handle to the object

One process gives the object a name when it is created and

the second process opens that name
DuplicateHandle function:

Given a handle to process and the handles value a

second process can get a handle to the same object, and
thus share it

Programmer Interface Process Management

Process is started via the CreateProcess routine which

loads any dynamic link libraries that are used by the

process, and creates a primary thread.
Additional threads can be created by the CreateThread
function.
Every dynamic link library or executable file that is loaded

into the address space of a process is identified by an

instance handle.

Process Management (Cont.)

Scheduling in Win32 utilizes four priority classes:
1. IDLE_PRIORITY_CLASS (priority level 4)
2.

NORMAL_PRIORITY_CLASS (level8 typical for most processes

3.

HIGH_PRIORITY_CLASS (level 13)

4.

REALTIME_PRIORITY_CLASS (level 24)

To provide performance levels needed for interactive programs,

7 has a special scheduling rule for processes in the

NORMAL_PRIORITY_CLASS

7 distinguishes between the foreground process that is

currently selected on the screen, and the background
processes that are not currently selected.

When a process moves into the foreground, 7 increases the

scheduling quantum by some factor, typically 3.

Process Management (Cont.)

The kernel dynamically adjusts the priority of a thread

depending on whether it is I/O-bound or CPU-bound.

To synchronize the concurrent access to shared objects by

threads, the kernel provides synchronization objects, such as

semaphores and mutexes

In addition, threads can synchronize by using the

WaitForSingleObject or WaitForMultipleObjects
functions.

Another method of synchronization in the Win32 API is the

critical section.

Process Management (Cont.)

A fiber is user-mode code that gets scheduled according to a

user-defined scheduling algorithm.

Only one fiber at a time is permitted to execute, even on

multiprocessor hardware.

Windows 7 includes fibers to facilitate the porting of legacy

UNIX applications that are written for a fiber execution
model.

Windows 7 also introduced user-mode scheduling for 64-bit

systems which allows finer grained control of scheduling work

without requiring kernel transitions.

Programmer Interface Interprocess Communication

Win32 applications can have interprocess communication by

sharing kernel objects.

An alternate means of interprocess communications is message

passing, which is particularly popular for Windows GUI

applications

One thread sends a message to another thread or to a

window.

A thread can also send data with the message.

Every Win32 thread has its own input queue from which the

thread receives messages.

This is more reliable than the shared input queue of 16-bit

windows, because with separate queues, one stuck application

cannot block input to the other applications

Programmer Interface Memory Management

Virtual memory:

VirtualAlloc reserves or commits virtual memory

VirtualFree decommits or releases the memory

These functions enable the application to determine the

virtual address at which the memory is allocated

An application can use memory by memory mapping a file

into its address space

Multistage process

Two processes share memory by mapping the same file

into their virtual memory

Memory Management (Cont.)

A heap in the Win32 environment is a region of reserved

address space

A Win 32 process is created with a 1 MB default heap

Access is synchronized to protect the heaps space

allocation data structures from damage by concurrent
updates by multiple threads

Because functions that rely on global or static data typically fail

to work properly in a multithreaded environment, the threadlocal storage mechanism allocates global storage on a perthread basis

The mechanism provides both dynamic and static methods

of creating thread-local storage

Reference
ABRAHAM SILBERSCHATZ, PETER BAER GALVIN, GREG GAGNE,
OPERATING SYSTEM CONCEPTS, Ninth Edition, JOHN WILEY & SONS,
INC, 2012.