How does windows manages users & passwords?

I'm doing a research of the encryption methods of Linux and Windows.

I do know Linux manages his password by the shadow file (/etc/shadow), encrypting each one (mo开发者_C百科stly) by MD5 or SHA and saving them on that file, but which file does windows uses to manage users & passwords?

Can someone give me a little explanation or any website I can read about it?

The files are C:\WINDOWS\system32\config\SAM and C:\WINDOWS\system32\config\SYSTEM

Windows uses something called SAM to store user credentials (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_Accounts_Manager). From what I understand, it is possible to use the more unix-y PAM as well (http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2008/05/microsoft_windows_now_supports.html).

Hope this helps!