This chapter describes the contents of a unique segment that is found only in self-loading applications for the Microsoft Windows operating system. This segment contains six functions: three that the application developer supplies and three that the Windows kernel supplies. The segment also contains a table of pointers to these functions and loader code.
This chapter contains references to the Windows (new-style) header and the data tables in a Windows executable file. For a complete description of an executable file before it is altered by the loader and loaded into memory, see the Microsoft Windows Programmer's Reference, Volume 4.