Using halt from grub4dos on USB causes problems

Question

I'm multibooting serveral different Linux distros and repair discs from a single USB using grub4dos. While testing menus and such it would be helpful to boot to the device, look at the menu, and shutdown to remove the device. I'm using the halt command to stop execution so I can power off, but this leaves the USB open so that it is not recognized when reattached to another machine. Shutting down with it attached is the only way to make the PC recognize the disk again. Is there any alternative to using halt that will properly close removable drives or am I stuck booting all the way into an operating system just to shut down each time I want to see the grub4dos menu?

Answer 1

After looking around I've determined that this is no other way to shutdown the machine from the Grub4dos menu. However, I have found a much better testing scenario that employs virtualization. To use this method, you'll need to grab a free download of Oracle's VirtualBox and then map a virtual hard drive to your physical USB device. Full instructions here.