Windows memory questions

[pithhelmet]

Hi Everyone -

Couple of simple questions...

1) How does windows handle starting 2 or more applications with a same base starting address??

2) If (as i think) windows just starts applications at a certain area,
then quickly moves them to another spot in memory - what are the chances an application that spawns several other applications
can come back and step on the starting applications memory space????

thanks
tony

[CornedBee]

In Windows, every application has its own virtual address space. Within this space, it's completely alone and can thus have any base address it wants. Applications can't interfere with each other because they don't see each other.

In physical memory, the applications are at different addresses, but that doesn't matter because they don't know it. That's the duty of the memory manager of the OS.


It's a little more complicated than that, because Windows has a few address ranges reserved for special use, but that's not all that important.