Part 4 · Processes and Execution

Chapter 9 · Processes

2 min read

Status: ✅ COMPLETE

Scope: What a process is on Windows, how it is created and ends, what it owns (memory, handles, environment, DLLs), what states it moves through, how processes talk to each other, and how parents and children relate
Time to complete: 90–120 minutes of reading + lab
Prerequisites: Chapter 2 (CPU Internals), Chapter 3 (RAM and Memory Internals)
What you'll know after: How a running program is built and managed by Windows, how to inspect any process with Task Manager and PowerShell, and why a crash in one program does not bring down the others

INTRODUCTION

Open Task Manager and you will see dozens, sometimes hundreds, of entries. Each one is a process: a program that is running right now, with its own memory, its own settings and its own number. The operating system's whole job is to start them, keep them apart, share the CPU among them and clean up after them.

This chapter uses plain words, and every technical term is explained the first time it appears. It uses Windows tools you already have: Task Manager, PowerShell and Command Prompt.

This chapter explains:

  • What a process is, and how it differs from a program and a thread
  • How Windows creates a process (CreateProcess) and what happens when it ends
  • The private memory every process gets: image, stacks, heap
  • PIDs and handles: how Windows names processes and the things they open
  • The environment: variables, folder, command line, user identity
  • The states a process moves through while it waits for the CPU or for I/O
  • DLLs: shared code libraries, imports, exports and relocation
  • IPC: pipes, sockets, shared memory, messages and RPC
  • Parents, children, orphans and job objects

CHAPTER OUTLINE

Chapter Status: Complete
Estimated reading time: 100 minutes
Practical time: 30 minutes
Knowledge check time: 30 minutes