Sudden perpetual reboots of 16.04.1 LTS under VMware using 4.4.0-112-generic x86_64

Hi everyone,

I've several VMs running for over a year that suddenly auto updated, even though auto update is OFF and the new kernel is causing perpetual rebooting when using 4.4.0-112-generic x86_64

If I switch back to 4.4.0-31-generic x86_64 everything works.

This happened most definitively around the time frame of the Meltdown and Spectre craze and I am almost certain Ubuntu pushed some update despite updates being OFF that that's what broke 112

So now I have to manually switch to Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.4.0-31-generic x86_64) or else not reboot the VMs because 16.04.1 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.4.0-112-generic x86_64) causes perpetual reboots

Any idea of what happened?

Thanks
~B