HLT — Halt

F4 HLT ZO Valid Valid Halt

Instruction Operand Encoding

Op/En Operand 1 Operand 2 Operand 3 Operand 4


Stops instruction execution and places the processor in a HALT state. An enabled interrupt (including NMI and SMI), a debug exception, the BINIT# signal, the INIT# signal, or the RESET# signal will resume execution. If an interrupt (including NMI) is used to resume execution after a HLT instruction, the saved instruction pointer (CS:EIP) points to the instruction following the HLT instruction.

When a HLT instruction is executed on an Intel 64 or IA-32 processor supporting Intel Hyper-Threading Technology, only the logical processor that executes the instruction is halted. The other logical processors in the physical processor remain active, unless they are each individually halted by executing a HLT instruction.

The HLT instruction is a privileged instruction. When the processor is running in protected or virtual-8086 mode, the privilege level of a program or procedure must be 0 to execute the HLT instruction.



Enter Halt state;

Flags Affected


Protected Mode Exceptions

#UD If the LOCK prefix is used.

Real-Address Mode Exceptions


Virtual-8086 Mode Exceptions

Same exceptions as in protected mode.

Compatibility Mode Exceptions

Same exceptions as in protected mode.

64-Bit Mode Exceptions

Same exceptions as in protected mode.