Rating: 
Summary: Doing serious Win32 Development? YES. Then get this book.
Review: Anyone doing serious Windows development using the base Win32 API's must have this book. It covers intermediate and advanced usage of the file system, DLL's, memory architecture, memory management, thread synchronization, memory mapped files, and a host of other more advanced topics. The coverage of the various subjects is complete and the code examples well written. Really anyone doing development under the Win32 API will benefit greatly from this book. Get it. I hope this helps J.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Excellent Excellent
Review: At last a book that answers all my programming questions for Windows. I have always wondered how some of the applications I use do certain things and get information, now I know. It is easy to read, gives lots of code examples showing how to use certain API functions. To really get a full understanding, it needs to be read twice. My only complaint is that the code samples are written in C.
Rating:
Summary: Great book on the Win32 API.
Review: Before reading this book I had a good grasp of C++ but didn't know much of the Win32 API except some of the function names I was really interested in. After sitting down for 2 - 3 weeks with the MSDN Library, Visual C++ and Advanced Windows I now have a firm grasp of most concepts. This book does not go into GUI development at all. I would recommend Programming Windows Fifth Edition for this. Since most of the code I write is for the backend (DLLs, Databases) my prefered GUI is always a web application so this was very desirable for me. If you want MFC you should probably get the Microsoft Mastering series title. If you want GUI get Programming Windows Fifth Edition. If you want hard core, Win32... GET THIS BOOK!
Rating:
Summary: Read it once and keep it near your desktop
Review: Excellent book. Read it just to know what it covers, then you can forget about those tricky functions, but do not forget where you saw them being used. When later you have a problem that may be resolved by one of those functions, just open the book and get your problem resolved.
Rating: 
Summary: Definitely not a good technical manual
Review: For example, the 5 pages of Appendix B merely tout what's so great about Message Crackers, but doesn't give any information on how to use them, or even the most elementary example of the most common ones. No discussion of the parameters used, or where these should be placed in code is given. Perhaps some like terse non-fiction, but for me, I need the details. I would prefer to give this book 0 stars, but the choices limit it to 1 star
Rating:
Summary: Two essential books: Petzold's and this book.
Review: For UNIX, you buy W. Richard Stevens' Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment and UNIX Network Programming -- for Win32 you buy Programming Windows by Charles Petzold and this book. Petzold gets you started, Richter lets you pursue the good stuff. Although this is easily a 5 star book, it is not without room for improvement. For the 4th edition, Mr. Richter, I'd like to see Anonymous and Named Pipes covered, as well as Mailslots, and some introductory coverage of Winsock (Winsock could be covered in a separate book.) It's a bit surprising that those topics aren't covered, since just about every advanced topic I was looking for was covered in excellent detail. To be in the same class as Stevens' books, I'd like to see some performance considerations included. For example, how much more expensive is a Mutex over Critical Sections and Events? Ralph Davis' book, Win32 Network Programming, covers this a little better, and includes quite a bit of discussion on advanced Win32 topics besides the networking APIs. And lastly, a hard-bound edition would be nice.
Rating:
Summary: Try "Programming Applications for Microsoft Windows"
Review: I believe "Programming Applications for Microsoft Windows" is the fourth edition to this book. The Microsoft Press summary for the new book says "This fully updated expansion of the bestselling ADVANCED WINDOWS digs even deeper into the advanced features..." And after comparing the table of contents of the two books, I decided to buy "Programming Applications" instead of this book.
Rating:
Summary: Try "Programming Applications for Microsoft Windows"
Review: I believe "Programming Applications for Microsoft Windows" is the fourth edition to this book. The Microsoft Press summary for the new book says "This fully updated expansion of the bestselling ADVANCED WINDOWS digs even deeper into the advanced features..." And after comparing the table of contents of the two books, I decided to buy "Programming Applications" instead of this book.
Rating:
Summary: a top win32 programming book, and enjoyable to read as well
Review: I disagree with the negative reviews found here. From someone having dozens of both MFC and non-MFC Windows programming books, Richer's book ranks easily among the top 5. It is a joy to find such clearly written technical book covering some of the most difficult areas of Win32 programming. Anybody doing complex, multithreaded Windows programming -- Even MFC programmers -- would do well to read this book from cover to cover. If nothing else to gain a solid understanding of how things work under the hood. Based on this book, I will confidently buy any other book written by this author.
Rating:
Summary: A resource for Windows programmers, not MFC geeks.
Review: I had the opportunity to attend a Win32 Seminar given by Jeff Richter. The guy knows his stuff. The Win32 API has grown and evolved over the years from its roots in Win16 and Windows 3.x. It has become more robust and refined just as Windows has (but as with Windows, still has its inherent flaws). While it would be nice to see the Windows programming style of Petzold et al in turn evolve to a more modular, reusable, and OO (C++) style, one must not forget the roots of the Win32 API(written in C). Richter does an admiral job of addressing the often vexing and misunderstood issues of memory management, processes, threads and thread synchronization. Don't expect this book to be a how to manual for MFC hacks. As the title states: Advanced Windows. I have recently gotten into WinCE programming. Between Richter's Advanced Windows and Boling's WinCE Programming book, I am surviving. No MFC here. All of the previous reviews were divided between either five stars(21) or one star(7). No in between here. This tells me that the reviewing audience consists of Windows programmers looking for a good resource or wanna-be Windows programmers whinning because it doesn't cover MFC.
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