Is there a kind of OS entropy pool on Windows systems? I am wondering if Windows provides an equivalent of /dev/urandom from linux ? Or any kind of system entropy pool ?
So far as I know, Windows does not (but you never know, it has an endless series of APIs so anything is possible). However, Intel hardware does. The Microsoft C/C++ compiler (and the Intel compiler) has intrinsics for obtaining a hardware generated random value. That value is obtained by running two circuits backwards so that are unstable. They generate a ton of very random bits which are then cleaned up. Intel has some white papers on it. I don't know if AMD processors have the same thing. I don't have either the name of the functions or the white paper handy, but you can find them with a web search (or, for the functions, look in the header files).