Same case here. I'm used to running several OS simultaneously out of one box for SW development purposes.
To do so, I run VirtualBox. I've got a powerful laptop with a dual boot with Ubuntu and W7.
Most of the time I boot out of the Ubuntu disk as host OS and boot various other OS as guests (it's a 16GB RAM laptop with i7 720QM - showing 8 CPUs).
Most guest OS live in their own dedicated VMDs, basically 50GB files on the Linux disks.
Except for the W7 partition which has its own 750GB disk, in the state it was when I purchased the laptop.
As you may know, with virtualbox, you can also, all precautions taken, boot a guest OS from a real partition (termed in this case raw disk).
However, I sometimes need to boot the native Windows partition natively rather than as a VirtualBox guest. It used to be easy with XP hardware profiles.
Not any more !!
I can still boot the native W7 inside VirtualBox as a guest. But when I try to boot it natively, W7 tries to reconfigure things and ends up displaying a grey screen (after spinning the disk for ages) thereby showing it's stuck somewhere or can't access the graphic card....
I can "repair" things but the same thing happens each time.
So now I'm using W7 only as a guest.
I can't help noticing that HW profiles have disappeared from the radar precisely when MS have tightened their anti-piracy policy and virtualization has arrived in the Wintel arena. Are we just witnessing yet another revenue protection measure ? (like when Intel would consent rebates to OEMs disabling VT in their BIOS ?).