If an operating system is installed directly into a VMware virtual machine, the operating system will properly detect all the virtual devices by scanning the hardware. In order to boot such preinstalled operating systems in a virtual machine, you will need to create separate hardware profiles in order to simplify the boot process. Each hardware profile is associated with a set of known devices. If more than one hardware profile exists, the user is prompted to choose between different hardware profiles at boot time. Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows 2000 use Plug and Play at boot time to confirm that the actual devices match the chosen hardware profile.
Mismatches lead to the automatic detection of new devices.
Although this operation succeeds, it can be a fairly slow one. Windows NT does not have Plug and Play support and uses the hardware profiles to initialize its devices. Mismatches will lead to errors reported by the device drivers and the devices are disabled. Click the Copy button and name the copies appropriately. Things to disable in the Virtual Machine hardware profile include audio, MIDI and joystick devices, Ethernet and other network devices and USB devices.