A mechanism to obtain a quiescence state for a component coupled to a bidirectional communications interface is obtained. A transition to quiescence may be may by activating a first defeature in the component to cause messages received over a communication bus coupled between the component and another component to be ignored, and activating a second defeature in the component to prevent messages from being sent over the communication bus by the component. Operations may then be performed on the component while the defeatures are activated.