Request for a self-paced WhatsRunning tutorial

[ohioguy]

As a private consultant software tutor I consider myself to be an
educated computer literate User. As such, I fully appreciate the time
and effort the creators or programmers spent on releasing the first
version of the WhatsRunning software suite, as well as what goes into
updating it. My concern is that even I don't understand all of the
information shown in the various areas of the WhatsRunning program.

As a software tutor, I give private lessons to my clients in their own
home and teach them to use the software installed on their machines.
I know that my clients appreciate the service I provide from the
positive and appreciative cards, letters, emails, and letters of
recommendation I receive. Now I in turn would appreciate it if
someone would provide the same type of service to me regarding the
WhatsRunning suite.

At the same time I realize that I could self-educate myself by
visiting numerous web sites on the Internet but it seems like it would
be more efficient if the creators of WhatsRunning would provide a self-
paced tutorial on using the program so the Users could learn as we use
the program. It would also be nice to have access to some educational
items regarding the wealth of knowledge the program provides. Thus I
find myself in the position where I have to second the post submitted
by the User who asked for some type of tutorial explaining the vast
amount of information the suite provides, as well as the use to which
the information can or should be applied. The suite itself is easy to
use but not so easy to understand, even for myself, much less a User
who isn't as knowledgeable about computer software as I am.

When one of the programmers finds the time to create and make
available such a tutorial, I would very much like to be notified.

I wish everyone a Happy Holiday Season and best wishes for a Healthy
and Prosperous New Year 2008!

Most sincerely, ohioguy in Columbus, Ohio

[gilgwitch]

As a user of Whatsrunning, I can appreciate what this author
requests.

But it's not so simple a task as he might think. To understand what
the program delivers requires two sets of knowledge. One set is a
clear understandingh of Windoes system internals. The other set is
prerequisit to the first, and is an understaning of how operating
systems work inside, I'm talking about things with names like process
queues, page tables, timers, callouts, device interrupts, traps,
software interrupts, socket abstractions, memory mapping (different
things at different levels such as device mapping or file
mapping...), scheduling units, the algorithms that go with such
things and much much more -- in other words a computer science degree
program with an operating systems oriented area of concentration.
I'm not saying you need a CS degree to understand it, just the
acquisition of the kind of knowledge and understanding that can lead
to one.

Of course you can make use of the program without knowing all of
that, but realize that before the author could write such a program,
he had to learn an awful lot in order to understand the portions of
the system internals that it grants access to. WHat he is doing is
translating what he finds inside the system into something that he
presents on the screen. How he found that data and what he
understamds of it is a function of his own education (regardless of
whether self-taught or schooled). It took him a long time to get to
the point where he was capable of doing so. It should be obvious by
now, but I'll say it anyway. To be able to impart all the knowledge
and an understaning of that knowledge sufficient to allow the end user
to fully understand what the program presents would be a task on the
order of providing a major education to the end-user. If I were the
author, I'd consider that beyond the scope of my responsibilities.
To provide usage instructions is one thing. it is one thing. To teach
the background required to understand what is going on in the system
is quite another.

Happy New Year to all!

[Robert Brown]

This is an absurd response. The purpose of writing this program was
presumably to enable the average tech-savvy computer user insight into
"What's Running" inside his or her computer. The program does an admirable
job of ferreting out a great deal of information, but without the knowledge
of what to do with that information, one might as well not have it. For the
program to have a wide user base and to be useful, a brief explanation of
what it is showing the user would be helpful.

Scary names should not be a deterrent. Even I, without a PHD in computer
science, know what terms such as "Algorithm" and "Device Interrupt" mean.

Robert Brown

[ohioguy]

I agree with this author's comments, and I'm also familiar with the
meaning of "Algorithim" and Device Interrupt." I also agree that it
should not be all that difficult to create a simple tutorial for the
program giving a "brief explanation of what it is showing." Perhaps
it could be included in the Help file?

My comment was meant as a personal observation on what I think is
lacking in an otherwise very useful program. I didn't mean to start a
heated debate, but as 2 other members had posted a similar comment, I
expected to receive more support than what another member posted.

ohioguy, Mike

> > Happy New Year to all!- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[gilgwitch]

Sigh. It would appear that the volume of my prose has tended to
obscure the message itself.

Windows in the very first place should have included "Whatsrunning" or
a functionally equivalent program. Whatsrunning itself is not all
that complicated (I think some people may have thought I was trying to
say otherwise). All it is doing is visiting the various nooks and
crannies of the host operating system and displaying what it finds.

"Inside windows NT" by Helen Custer can help explain what the program
is finding at thse nooks and in those crannies. N.B. however ...
That book is outdated(telling about Windows NT 3.5,... Windows XPsp2
is, I think, Windows NT 5.1) although the concepts remain the same,
but I wanted to refer to at least one source that I actually own.

Probably much better for understanding what it is that "Whatsrunning"
is showing you is "Microsoft Windows XP, Inside Out, Second Edition
(Inside Out) by Ed Bott, Carl Siechert, and Craig Stinson. It
should also help explain parts of the running system that Whatsrunning
does not show you, but if they matter to you, dig into the source
code and add them

Perhaps the author of Whatsrunning could name his own preference.

Remember, he did not write Windows. Just "Whatsrunning". So
perhaps his choice of reference material might be the best source of
explanations for users who want to learn about the Windows objects
that Whatsrunning is displaying, what they mean, and how one might
wish to use them.

[christer...@gmail.com]

As the author of What's Running, here is my view;

Fundamentally, as most of you understand, What's Running is a "window"
into what is happening inside your computer and basically leaves the
interpretation of that information to the user.

Understandably, this can be quite frustrating to a user equipped with
new information that is difficult to parse.

For the very most detailed info about the Windows family of operating
systems - there is no substitute to this book:
Microsoft Windows Internals - the successor to Helen Custers original.
More details about this book here: http://www.microsoft.com/mspress/books/6710.aspx

Other than that, I'd use Google to learn more about processes and
services that you don't understand.

For a newbie user, I would look at What's Running as a learning tool
to discover more of what is actually going on inside the OS. Armed
with that information, I would look to learning material about Windows
on the internet to understand more in detail what is going on.

Best regards,
Christer Fahlgren
Author of What's Running

[gilgwitch]

Christer,

Thank you *very* much for this post! I followed the link and it looks
cool. My windows knowledge is woefully out of date, something I hope
to address by ordering the book.

Back when I was working with such things, I found it frustrating
that, for just one example, just emulating a simple UNIX getppid()
call required contortions involving intercepting process creation
calls and redirecting all process access and manipulation calls to a
third party process whose job it was to maintain the state of
processes and their relationship to each other. Either that or run
the program under a "posix" subsystem that isolated the user from the
rest of windows. The failure of NT proper to maintain such basic state
was considered one of many significant flaws in what Bill Gates had
promised would be a "better Unix than Unix". (Yes, he really said
that!!!)

It seems obvious from examining the output of WhatsRunning for the
WhatsRunning process, that such contortions are no longer necessary in
order to obtain the parent process ID. I'm curious and eager to learn
what all else has been made less cumbersonme, so I'm ordering the
book as I type this message.

If it were only available at list price (60.00), I'd happily pay
that, but Amazon has it for only 36.00! For nearly a thousand pages
of this content, that's a steal! Especially for a book that has a
glowing reference from the author of WhatsRunning, a program which in
itself is a glowing reference for it's author!

Best regards, and Happy New Year!

- Michael

By the way, for those who had not heard this before, back when
Windows NT first came out, some engineers would refer to it as VMS++,
partly because some of NT's chief architects had previously developed
DEC's VMS operating system for the VAX, and partly because of what
you get when you add one to each of the letters in "VMS".