What BootCamp is, and brief info

[TalonNYC]

A few people recently have asked how to run Windows on a Mac. I can speak to how Boot Camp works, which I use with the ResScan software.

If you are on an Intel-based mac, and you have Mac OS X 10.6 or up, you can create a secondary disk that contains a fully-bootable installation of Windows. This Boot Camp Partition will allow you to run a full install of Windows, including being able to use all the Windows software packages and hardware. You will only be able to run one OS at a time, but can flip back and forth between the two via a reboot (see below).

Read all of this info FIRST to avoid headaches.

You will need:

Enough free space to create the new disk on your existing hard drive - at least 5GB. Open Finder and select your computer's hard drive to see how much free space you have displayed at the bottom of the Finder window. I'd recommend at least 10GB of free space for Windows XP, 25GB for Windows Vista or 7.
A licensed copy of Windows XP, Vista or 7 (I've only tried this with Windows 7, but many people swear by XP)
About 2 hours of free time
Your Mac OS Install DVD (that came with your Mac)

Once you have these items, you can begin the process of setting up a Boot Camp Partition, by following the instructions in this Adobe PDF:

http://newbie2mac.com/Boot_Camp_Install-Setup_10.6.pdf Note: This was retrieved from Apple's webiste on 4/7/2011 - it may have changed since then, so you may wish to visit Support.Apple.com for an updated version.

One critical tip that seems to get glossed over in the guide:
If you go to create the Partition (still in Mac OS) and you get a message that "Some files could not be moved," put your Mac OS DVD into the drive, reboot while holding down the Option key, and let the Mac OS installer start. Select your language, but DO NOT actually install Mac OS. Go to the menu bar, select Utilities and start the Disk Utility. Select your main hard disk and choose Repair Disk. You will not destroy any data, and don't be surprised if it comes back as "no errors found," this isn't abnormal. Reboot your machine (might have to hold the power button down) and boot back into your Mac OS drive like normal. Then you should be able to run the Boot Camp Assistant without the error. The issue is caused by a fragmented file (or files) and can't be fixed while Mac OS is running, which is why you need the boot DVD to make it work.

When you are done with the process, you can switch between OS's pretty easily:

During hardware boot, hold down the Alt/Option key right after you hear the bong sound. Hold it until you see the boot disk selection screen, and choose which one you want to boot into.

Install a free software tool called BootChamp (which, as of this post you can get at http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/28468/bootchamp) This let's you swap to Windows when inside MacOS, your computer will shut down MacOS and reboot into Windows.

In Windows, in the tray (right-side area of the taskbar), you will have a BootCamp icon. It may be hidden, so hit the little arrow if you don't see it. This will let you boot into MacOS. You will see Windows shut down and the computer will reboot in MacOS.

By default, the computer will boot whatever the last OS you used was if you initiate a reboot or power cycle.

I have used this to successfully run the ResScan software on Mac hardware, including reading the SD card from my S9 device. Trying to do that with a virtual machine is kind of hit or miss, but it worked every time in Boot Camp.

Happy Sleeping.