Testing your Windows Internals knowledge
I see that we now have an exam in the making for testing knowledge of "Windows Internals". The exam is available for taking now, in beta form, and if you pass then you won't have to take it again once the final version is released. You can read more about how to take the exam here. You can read about preparing for the exam here.
I'm slightly confused by this on the prep page:
"Preparation Tools and Resources
To help you prepare for this exam, Microsoft Learning recommends that you have hands-on experience with the product and that you use the following training resources. These training resources do not necessarily cover all of the topics listed in the "Skills Measured" tab.
...
Microsoft Press Books: There are no Microsoft Press books currently available. "
You would have thought the obvious preparation reading would be:
and if you can wait until January there should be a fifth edition of that book available.
I think another great source of relevant "inside" information for this exam is the Sysinternals site. If you don't already know the site, check out the tools, forums and blog posts there.
Another good point of reference is the online "Debugging Tools for Windows" documentation, particular in the section titled "Debugging Techniques".
The final point of reference is just doing it. When something goes wrong on your system or someone else's system, follow the rabbit down the hole and see where it takes you.
I'm not sure how I rate my chances of passing this. Although I do a lot of Windows systems debugging in my job it tends to be mostly user mode and I by the looks of it this exam will cover a lot of kernel mode stuff. We'll have to just wait and see :-)
HTH
Doug