diff --git a/tests/qemu-iotests/162 b/tests/qemu-iotests/162
index 0b43ea339598..c7e65936cac3 100755
--- a/tests/qemu-iotests/162
+++ b/tests/qemu-iotests/162
@@ -51,8 +51,7 @@ $QEMU_IMG info 'json:{"driver": "nbd", "host": "does.not.exist.example.com", "po
 # This is a test for NBD's bdrv_refresh_filename() implementation: It expects
 # either host or path to be set, but it must not assume that they are set to
 # strings in the options QDict
-$QEMU_NBD -k "$PWD/42" -f raw null-co:// &
-sleep 0.5
+$QEMU_NBD -k "$PWD/42" -f raw --fork null-co://
 $QEMU_IMG info 'json:{"driver": "nbd", "path": 42}' | grep '^image'
 rm -f 42