Apple Discussion Board Users List Boot Camp Woes

Apple Computer's new software for installing Windows XP on an Intel Mac could leave the computer unable to boot back into OS X, users reported.

Under the topic "Boot Camp hosed my OS X partition," about a dozen users on an Apple discussion board shared experiences and possible solutions. Worst case scenario involved reformatting the Mac hard drive.

In installing Boot Camp, the hard drive is partitioned for OS X and XP. Installing the latter went without a hitch, but the machine would no longer boot back to the Mac operating system, according to users.

Instead, they received error messages indicating the problem could be related to the partitioning.

"XP installed perfectly, including the enormous number of updates, but it hosed my OS X partition," a poster, identified only as Gary from Minneapolis, said.Apple on Tuesday said it was looking into the problem and would have an official response later.

Despite the reported problems, other users have said that Boot Camp, which was released in beta last week, has worked smoothly, enabling the machines to run Windows applications at performance levels to comparable PCs.