diff --git a/src/util/virxml.c b/src/util/virxml.c
index 51173303fe..38baeec5bb 100644
--- a/src/util/virxml.c
+++ b/src/util/virxml.c
@@ -1047,6 +1047,11 @@ catchXMLError(void *ctx, const char *msg G_GNUC_UNUSED, ...)
     cur = ctxt->input->cur;
     base = ctxt->input->base;
 
+    /* skip backwards over NUL terminator, in case we failed
+     * parsing at the EOF position */
+    if ((cur > base) && *cur == '\0')
+        cur--;
+
     /* skip backwards over any end-of-lines */
     while ((cur > base) && ((*(cur) == '\n') || (*(cur) == '\r')))
         cur--;
diff --git a/tests/qemuxmlconfdata/broken-xml-invalid.x86_64-latest.err b/tests/qemuxmlconfdata/broken-xml-invalid.x86_64-latest.err
index 35a1801371..a3bacd5d3a 100644
--- a/tests/qemuxmlconfdata/broken-xml-invalid.x86_64-latest.err
+++ b/tests/qemuxmlconfdata/broken-xml-invalid.x86_64-latest.err
@@ -1,3 +1,3 @@
 ABS_SRCDIR/qemuxmlconfdata/broken-xml-invalid.xml:2: Couldn't find end of Start Tag dom line 1
-(null)
-^
+<dom
+----^