Virtual Server not cleanly shutting down

We have a few virtual servers here and have seen issues when shutting down a virtual server host machine. When the system comes back online, all the virtual servers come up fine, but they all have been shutdown unexpectedly (as if there were a power failure). I found this entry on Virtual PC Guy’s Weblog that details a registry key that will instruct windows to wait longer than the usual 20 seconds before killing a non-responding service (if you have more than one virtual machine, it may take longer than 20 seconds to shut it down or save state).

http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2005/06/07/426475.aspx

The key is [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\WaitToKillService] . The time is in milliseconds.

On another note, here is an article detailing the steps to enable shut down or save state of a virtual machine when the Virtual Server Service shuts down.

http://www.windowsitpro.com/Article/ArticleID/46057/46057.html