diff --git a/src/qemu/qemu_process.c b/src/qemu/qemu_process.c
index b067f1846a974d4c295c5aa9a77ed536d3452895..e2ccc4e568aca1a8924014364877b51849c8d09a 100644
--- a/src/qemu/qemu_process.c
+++ b/src/qemu/qemu_process.c
@@ -2231,6 +2231,40 @@ qemuProcessDetectVcpuPIDs(virQEMUDriverPtr driver,
     int ncpupids;
     qemuDomainObjPrivatePtr priv = vm->privateData;
 
+    /*
+     * Current QEMU *can* report info about host threads mapped
+     * to vCPUs, but it is not in a manner we can correctly
+     * deal with. The TCG CPU emulation does have a separate vCPU
+     * thread, but it runs every vCPU in that same thread. So it
+     * is impossible to setup different affinity per thread.
+     *
+     * What's more the 'query-cpus' command returns bizarre
+     * data for the threads. It gives the TCG thread for the
+     * vCPU 0, but for vCPUs 1-> N, it actually replies with
+     * the main process thread ID.
+     *
+     * The result is that when we try to set affinity for
+     * vCPU 1, it will actually change the affinity of the
+     * emulator thread :-( When you try to set affinity for
+     * vCPUs 2, 3.... it will fail if the affinity was
+     * different from vCPU 1.
+     *
+     * We *could* allow vcpu pinning with TCG, if we made the
+     * restriction that all vCPUs had the same mask. This would
+     * at least let us separate emulator from vCPUs threads, as
+     * we do for KVM. It would need some changes to our cgroups
+     * CPU layout though, and error reporting for the config
+     * restrictions.
+     *
+     * Just disable CPU pinning with TCG until someone wants
+     * to try to do this hard work.
+     */
+    if (vm->def->virtType == VIR_DOMAIN_VIRT_QEMU) {
+        priv->nvcpupids = 0;
+        priv->vcpupids = NULL;
+        return 0;
+    }
+
     if (qemuDomainObjEnterMonitorAsync(driver, vm, asyncJob) < 0)
         return -1;
     /* failure to get the VCPU<-> PID mapping or to execute the query