This is a question received by Intel Software Network Support, along with the submitter's own solution:
Q. Just wondering why a piece of code such as the following is causing a reset when it's booted - it's (meant to be) based on the example in your manual.
Obviously I'm not understanding something. The following's in NASM syntax by the way.
bits 16
cli
// setup temporary descriptor table at 0
mov ebx, 0x0
// null
mov dword [ebx], 0
mov dword [ebx+4], 0
// temporary data descriptor
mov dword [ebx+8], 0x0000ffff
mov dword [ebx+12], 0x00cf9200
// contents for the gdtr (limit 15 (16 bytes)) base 0
mov dword [ebx+32], 15
mov dword [ebx+34], 0
// load gdtr from the
lgdt [ebx+32]
// switch into protected mode using the PE bit
mov ebx, cr0
or ebx, 0x1
mov cr0, ebx
I've tested the code in various vms - blows up in each.
A. I suspect I've found the issue - I didn't perform a near jump down to the initial code segment base and (also) didn't use nops to fill the 16 bytes from 0xFFFFFFF0 in there.
