some un-organized notes...
Early versions of Microsoft windows OS are DOS-based, from windows 3.0 to Windows Me, the GUI are just graphical shells of the underlying DOS system. However, the DOS basis is discarded when Microsoft moved on to Windows NT and its late variations (so called windows 2000 and windows xp).
For a executionable file to be excuted by the operating system, some common consensus over fie format has to be agreed. How does it tell the OS to find libraries, etc. This leads to the area of windows exe file format. In the current prevailing windows platform, PE (portable executable) format is assumed. Portable executable basically targets at portability over all all 32 bit Microsoft OSes. PE is developed based on the old COFF (common object file format) format on Unix.
