Shutting down virtualbox when computer powers down

[londophil]

I am running virtualbox 3.2.8. on Mac OS X 10.6.4. and would like to shutdown the guest machine (Win XP) automatically when the computer powers off. This doesn't work, because a dialogue box pops up which wants me to confirm the shutdown of the virtual machine. Is there a possibility to disable that dialogue box?

Thanks for your input!
*Philippe

[Perryg]

Better not do that. If you force a shutdown and VBox was not shut down properly you will loose the guest.

[Sasquatch]

There is a very dirty hack you can use to put the VM in saved state before the shut down takes place, but you have to postpone the shutdown process enough for that to finish. This hack however, as stated, is very dirty and could break several things and can even be reversed on an OS update.
So even though it's possible, I wouldn't do it. Just remember to close the VM yourself. When you want things to go right, do it yourself . I'm with Perry on this.

[rpmurray]

You can use terminal commands to control the VM. The guys in this topic VBox Daemon for Mac OS X were talking about how to do something like this for a headless VM for when they startup and shutdown the computer. Maybe you can use some of their ideas.