The Depths of Windows Memory (Part 3) — Section Objects and Copy-on-Write: What DLLs and File Mappings Really Are (archived 2026-08-30)

Abstract

This article connects section objects, image and data mappings, the shared cache, and copy-on-write to explain how DLLs and shared memory share physical pages. Archived version of https://comcomponent.com/en/blog/windows-memory-internals-section-copy-on-write/, as published on 2026-08-30. The live article is maintained and may change after this date. First published 2026-08-20.