Windows Host shutdown -any guests running stop windows from shuting down correctly

[Jimbo]

Is there a way to improve the shutdown of guests on a windows host which is performing a shutdown / reboot.

the only way to reboot a windows host (ie for windows updates) is to use vboxtray which detects the reboot and auto-saves state of the guests...

I'm running 2 guests on a windows server which I can only get to remotely... as soon as I issue a restart (or windows udpates do) it kills my remote connection but the server is left hanging there as it cannot shutdown the guest's running on it. I end up having to get someone to manually click close / force reboot etc,etc to get the host server to shutdown / reboot.

the server can reboot / shutdown automatically for various resaons such as a UPS shutting the server down after a power cut...

as I say vboxtray manages to just about get round this by auto-save state but surely virtualbox host or guest apps could do with a settings that detects host shutdown (whether guest is in GUI or headless mode) and does a save state as a default and helps the windows host do a clean shutdown / reboot???

I have this problem on all version of VB since I started using it on 3.2.6 and I've tried it on different HOST machines - win xp pro, win 7 biz, server 2003 64bit.

Without vboxtray we wouldn't have a get round solution, which sort of works but I find that vboxtray sometimes closes on the tray so can fall over too sometimes.

can this be added as a feature request for windows hosts please

many thanks

[Ju52]

I really want to endorse this feature request! Using GPO-triggered shutdown-scripts on a Windows host doesn't help, because the VBox-GUI is shown *before* these shutdown-scripts are run - pausing the hosts shutdown process waiting for user interaction.

I suggest to implement the following options in the virtual machine's properties:

1) Start machine with host (yes/no) 2) Delay after host starts (seconds) 3) Shutdown with host (yes/no) 4) Primary shutdown action (savestate/acpipowerbutton/poweroff/show GUI) 5) Allowed time for step 4 / shutdown (seconds) 6) Secondary shutdown action (if primary shutdown action fails) (poweroff/show GUI and wait for user interaction) 7) Allowed time for user interaction when showing GUI in step 6 [when there is no user reaction within this deadline: poweroff / forced shutdown is initiated]

1)+ 2) could be done by a startup-script of course. So these two are just "nice-to-have".

[ionelmc]

Any changes on this? At least some formal response like "we don't want to implement this any time soon" ?

[ionelmc]

Also, this seems related to #3500

[davor]

Auto start is easy set through scheduling and vboxmanage. The most important is a setting to SaveState once host shutdown is initiated. Can this be set somehow without third party software?