mechanisms for allowing Windows programs to communicate over the network while maintaining security, plus their ways of fitting into complete product architectures. It's a complete engineering document with considerable information on identifying security threats, giving them relative weight, and deciding how to deal with them in the designs of your systems.

for programmers writing system-level utilities and applications

how to develop NT/2000 Services that use sockets, DCOM, CORBA and other distribute-transports to communicate with the outside world

five volume set: Active Directory Programmer's Guide, Active Directory Reference, Active Directory Service Interfaces, Programmer's Guide, Active Directory Service Interfaces Reference, and Active Directory Schema.

another five volume set, 3200+pages

from Windows 2000 programming fundamentals to advanced topics such as COM/COM+ components, distributed COM (DCOM), MTS and MSMQ servers, ISAPI filters and extensions, security, and Active Directory Services

explanations of the complex Windows 2000 programming environment - in the typical Ground Up approach, the book provides accelerated coverage of fundamentals and gets programmers productive fast.

I like the Dummies series.

full source code on the CD

provides C/C++ guide to writing drivers that conform to the new Windows 2000 driver standard.

for intermediate to advanced levels