Prevent reboot

[Rameur]

Hi all,

I'm scripting a complex software installation, and some steps involve the use of a virtual machine.
As I use VirtualBox since years, I use it for this project but I'm stuck with one thing: I need to prevent the virtual machine to reboot.

During the software installation, a program ask the guest to reboot.
I want the guest to shutdown instead. Then some other automated tasks are done, and the guest is booted again.
Qemu have a -no-reboot parameter. I tested and this works nicely: when the guest reboot... it just stop.

Anyone have an idea to let the guest stops instead of reboot ?

note: the reboot is not initiated from an ACPI call. I already disabled ACPI and this changes nothing.

Some ideas:
- a BIOS trick (modifying some bytes ?)
- monitoring the guest state (how ?), and stopping the virtual machine when a rebbot occur
- modifying the guest configuration while running (which part ?) to prevent the reboot to be possible (but I need another system to detect the hang and stop the virtual machine)

Currently I use an awfull hack:
- the guest runs headless (from a Linux ssh session)
- a vnc (headless) client send the screen content to a script
- when the boot screen appear for the second time, the script kills the guest
This works but:
- this is somewhat complex
- this is not reliable: many system glitchs can prevent the vnc client or the script to do their job

[Gabrox]

i think it's a bug with the old intel dual core processors. i've got the same error after a lot of configuration with install win8