I have VMWare installed with XP as the host OS. I also have SUSE 9.1 installed and configured for dual-booting. Works nicely.

I've played with using VMWare to fire and run SUSE, and it appears to work (once I get through HW discovery). My question is, can I define and
boot using different HW profiles (SUSE) ??

I'd like to be able to boot SUSE in native mode (I use grub) and use my systems hw devices to their fullest, but also be able to boot SUSE from VMWare, using those devices (similated) that VMWare presents. Can I specify a HW profile for SUSE to use at time of boot?

Has anyone done this? Can it be done?
Thanks.

It sounds like you need to run SuSE as your main OS and run SuSE on VMWare on it..

What you are asking is very difficult. Shoot.. even Windows will plug an play itself to death (death being the operative word here). I no longer recommend that anyone try to boot a native install under VMware. Best to eliminate dual booting altogether if possible and just run SUSE with Windows under VMware inside of a virtual disk.

So... the answer is no. If you just HAVE to do this. You will want to match, as close as possible, your hardware with the virtual hardware under VMware (e.g. have a PCnet32 ethernet, Buslogic SCSI, etc). But ... I don't recommend this at all.