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STATUS_ABIOS_INVALID_SELECTOR
This status concerns validation of a selector already present in the ABIOS path
STATUS_ABIOS_INVALID_SELECTOR is the validation counterpart to STATUS_ABIOS_SELECTOR_NOT_AVAILABLE. ABIOS was designed to work in protected-mode environments and its initialization documentation describes pointer conversion and firmware data structures used by an operating system. In that execution model, a selector is part of a segmented memory reference; this code says the selector presented to the ABIOS-related path is unacceptable, rather than saying no selector resource could be obtained.
Old driver and emulator bugs can corrupt selectors through structure packing, stale initialization state, or reuse of data built for a different execution mode. Capture the value before the failing service call and identify which field or converted pointer supplied it. A reboot that rebuilds descriptor state may make the symptom disappear, but that does not distinguish a transient allocator problem from a caller that stored an invalid selector.
Do not infer a precise descriptor-table rule from the NTSTATUS name alone. Microsoft publishes the symbolic ABIOS statuses but not the internal Windows validation predicate for this code. The defensible diagnostic approach is to correlate the selector with the ABIOS initialization stage, current mode, common-data-area/device structures, and the code that performed pointer conversion. If no ABIOS-capable environment is present, first revisit why the legacy ABIOS path was entered at all.
What to inspect
- Log the selector value and the ABIOS field or converted pointer that supplied it.
- Check execution mode and structure packing around legacy 16/32-bit boundaries.
- Compare with selector acquisition logs to distinguish an invalid value from resource unavailability.
References
- IBM: Advanced BIOS (ABIOS) manual
- IBM: ABIOS for PS/2 computers and compatibles
- IBM: PS/2 Hardware Interface Technical Reference
- Microsoft Open Specifications: NTSTATUS values
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