How .NET communicates with operating system?.

Pitchaiyan PST

Hi all there,

I have doubt here ie; Which part of .NET communicates with Operating Systems and also how it differs from different operating systems if it does, Thanks in advance.

2 Replies

Know the answer? Post it — somebody with the same question will find it here.

Sam Hobbs11y ago
The CLR (.Net) uses the Windows API. At the application programming (CLR) side nearly all of the Windows API is native DLLs. So .NET communicates with Windows using native DLLs. See the image in User mode and kernel mode for a better understanding of the relationship among applications, the Windows API and the Windows kernel.
Note that things are different for Windows 8 (Windows Store) applications. I am not sure how they work.
Vulpes12y ago
The Common Language Runtime (CLR) is an unmanaged application, written in C++, which manages the execution of .NET applications. Where necessary it communicates with the operating system by calling the appropriate functions in the Win32 API or COM interfaces.

It also provides the infrastructure - Platform Invoke and COM interop - whereby .NET applications can themselves interface with the OS or with other unmanaged code.

The Microsoft version of .NET only runs on Windows.

The Mono project's version runs on other operating systems including Linux and Mac OS X. Their version of the CLR is written in C and communicates with those OS's using the APIs they expose for systems programming.