Microsoft Windows library files
list of main shared-libraries of Microsoft Windows
The Microsoft Windows operating system and Microsoft Windows SDK support a collection of shared libraries that software can use to access the Windows API. This article provides an overview of the core libraries included with modern Windows installation, upon which most Windows applications are built.
Library sources
The Windows operating system contains compiled versions of these libraries known as dynamically-linked libraries (.dll), which are executable libraries that can be used by multiple programs while only one copy of the library is loaded into memory. These are canonically referred to as system libraries and all programs installed on the system can utilize them.
The Windows SDK additionally distributes compiled versions of these libraries known as statically-linked libraries (.lib), which are non-executable libraries that, in whole or in part, can be embedded into a program when it is compiled. The most common Windows compilers being Microsoft Visual Studio and MinGW.
Internal components
NTDLL.DLL
NTDLL.DLL exports the Windows Native API. The Native API is the interface used by user-mode components of the operating system that must operate without support from Win32 or other API subsystems. Most of this API is implemented NTDLL.DLL and at the upper edge of ntoskrnl.exe (and its variants), and the majority of exported symbols within these libraries are prefixed Nt, for example NtDisplayString(). Native APIs are also used to implement many of the "kernel APIs" or "base APIs" exported by KERNEL32.DLL. The large majority of Windows applications do not call NTDLL.DLL directly.
Applications that are linked directly against this library are said to use the native subsystem; the primary reason for their existence is to perform tasks that must run early in the system startup sequence before the Win32 subsystem is available. An obvious but important example is the creation of the Win32 subsystem process, csrss.exe. Before the csrss.exe process exists, no Win32 processes may be created, therefore the process that creates it (Smss.exe, the "session manager") must use the native subsystem.
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