I've looked online and all the examples that i come across(code listed below) say to do this?



This will compile but when i try to run the exe it says "NTVDM.EXE has stopped working" and i have to close it, it only happens if i add the code.

In case your wondering what code i have wrote here it is.



The bare minimum to test "db 'y' " as code is all i wrote.

COM files begin execution at the very first byte. For your code above the first instruction to be executed to whatever 0x79 disassembles to.

If you want to display 'y' to the screen then you will need to write code to send the character 'y' to the OS to to get it displayed.

You placed this topic in the Windows forum so I don't know how to properly advise because you posted DOS code. If you can confirm whether you want Windows code or DOS code then we can help you better.

oops sorry about posting in the wrong forum, yea i'm working with a dos console program.

this code works perfectly fine.



It just loops and doesn't crash but when i add the db 'y' in the code it will crash and i won't be able to print a char to screen if i can't first store it.

Store the character below the code:

Well that worked! thanks, it's kind of weird because i was following a guy who wrote his code the way i showed you, and it worked for him but maybe it's because he's using linux.

Even in DOS you can put your data and strings first if you use an EXE format. You also have to tell the assembler where the first instruction is so that the EXE file can tell the OS how to run the code.

It is the COM format that requires the first instruction to be at the beginning of the file. So for you the first instruction was 'y' (0x79, ...) which is clearly not what you wanted.