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The section on QEMU's behaviour on triple fault seems not to be valid any more, see http://forum.osdev.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=25523 -- Simified ( talk) 16:04, 1 April 2015 (UTC) reply

Sometimes the page seems to say that a Triple Fault causes the whole computer to reboot (which in my mind at least includes a POST and booting an OS), while in other parts it seems to say that it's a fast way to switch in and out of Protected Mode. (It doesn't seem that fast to me!)

I can only think that this all hinges on the word "typically" in the first section, where it says that a shutdown cycle "... typically [...] causes the whole computer to reboot."

My best guess is that with some additional setup you can trigger a shutdown cycle that doesn't cause a reboot, but it's not clear.