Boot Camp users reporting serious crashes

Over on the Apple.com discussion boards, a number of people are reporting that Boot Camp--Apple's new beta software that allows Intel-based Mac owners to install Windows XP--is causing some serious problems.

To be precise, the common crisis is that after partitioning their hard drives and installing Windows XP--which seems to work fine--these people find they can no longer boot back into OS X.

And it's not just one or two people. A quick read through these forums revealed around 10 people with the problem--and a growing list of scary-sounding error messages.

A few of them are posting back with possible solutions, many of them rather complex for a novice user, but then again, novice users probably aren't the ones installing Boot Camp at this point, anyway.

Either way, it's not clear if the potential solutions being posted are working, but one thing that does come through in the various people's cries for help in the forums is that disk repair software they bought--because Apple isn't providing official support for Boot Camp--isn't doing the trick.

So, all the early reports had it that Boot Camp was working fine for most people. But be prepared for a new round of trouble reports. And be very careful out there.