Microsoft’s choice to omit the x86 HLT (halt) instruction from Windows 95’s shipped idle path was not a bug or oversight — it was a deliberate, conservative engineering decision taken to avoid a catastrophic failure mode that, in lab and field tests, could leave some laptops effectively bricked...
apic
bios
bricked laptops
cpu idle
engineering decision
firmware
hardware compatibility
hlt
hlt instruction
kernel idle
legacy os
oem ecosystems
power efficiency
power management
recovery and rollback
risk management
smm
system safety
windows 95
x86