Disable automatic USB detection... grasping at straws

[Kurt Granroth]

I have a bit of a unique situation, I think, and I can't seem to find  
a way to get things to work the way I want.  Here's the deal: I have  
a Windows XP session running inside of VMWare that I use for a few  
necessary tasks that are not doable under Linux or OS X.  One of the  
essential apps for doing this is the wonderful SplashID program, half  
of which runs on the desktop and half on my Palm.  Since I want to  
keep the desktop version and the Palm version in sync, I necessarily  
have to do the HotSync inside of the VMWare session.  Back in the  
day, that would have worked just fine... but these days, SuSE is just  
too darn good at autodetecting and configuring things like that.  I  
mean, as soon as I press the HotSync button the cradle, I see  
messages in /var/log/messages saying that it recognizes it as a  
Handspring Visor and gives the model and configures everything just  
great.

Pretty sweet, huh?  Well, not in my case.  I want VMWare to handle  
all this but as long as the host operating system takes control,  
VMWare refuses to touch it.

So what I want to do is DISABLE the USB autodetection and have no  
idea how.  Any clues how SuSE 10.0 is doing this?

Kurt