Since its inception, NT has had very few really informative books to support it, probably because it wasn't anywhere near being a mainstream operating system. The recent [and relative] flood of NT titles hasn't been exactly awe-inspiring, either. Most of the books now available tend toward the beginner computer user, some even including chapters describing "what the internet is", or "how to double-click an icon", and so forth.
Even the books supposedly aimed at higher-level users leave much to be desired: if I plunk down $50 on an NT tome, I'd like to read more about the NT File Cache Manager than one paragraph describing how awesome it is. Indeed, I'd like to read why I should trust my data to NT: how does the Cache Manager work; what happens to the cache's contents if you lose power; can a programmer decide to make certain data off-limits to the Cache Manger; and so forth.
From much experience with NT books, I highly recommend one book which I have had for years (from NT v3.1, in 1993) by Jerry Richter called Advanced Windows NT, that has lots of good information in it. Unfortunately, it's out of print, although amazon.com offers to try to find a used copy for you within 2-6 months.
Another title, often called a must-read, has always been Helen Custer's Inside the Windows NT File System. It was published in 1994, but it's information is still timely and useful, and gives great insight to the inner workings of NTFS.
Most recently, there's a book due out soon from O'Reilly that should be a must-read: Unauthorized Windows NT. I have been waiting for a book like this for years! Some excerpts are now on the web:
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Adding New System Services to the Windows NT Kernel, and
Run any Ring 0 code from a Win32 application on Windows NT
While I was at O'Reilly checking on the availability of this book, I saw a few other new titles that looked intriguing. One was "Unauthorized Excel 97", which I'm getting (I'm obviously and "Unauthorized" fan). The others were:
The first one should be killer if you're into understanding NT at all. I haven't read it yet, but I've ordered it, and hope it's as informative as it seems to be.
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