hi, very interesting. My mac mini has allowed me to install windows xp on a partition I made as bootcamp refused, and now when i boot it it only goes into windows and i get a padlock image when I reboot with the alt key held down. It is set up with Lion on the main partition, which i backed up to an external HD via Clone copy CCC. I don't know the password to boot from other devices. do you advise this method for my problem? thanks - I'm new to mac's, regards, paul