Overview

With the release of Boot Camp 1.2 by Apple, this guide should not be followed unless you've tried Boot Camp 1.2 and find you're having issues with it and wish to continue with Boot Camp 1.1 drivers, or if you need to manually install a particular driver.

Installation of Vista via Boot Camp is easy. No hacks are needed, only an Intel Mac, Boot Camp and a legitimate and genuine copy of the Windows installation DVD and a licence owned by you to use it.

Notes

• These instructions were carried out on a Gen 2 MacBook Vista Ultimate 32-bit with the installation DVD.
• Users have tried and succeeded in installing Vista 64-bit, however drivers are hard to find and the Apple specific hardware will not work, such as the iSight, Bluetooth, etc. due to the fact that they're written for 32-bit Windows XP SP2.

Disclaimer

Back-up all essential data before doing this. If you are not comfortable installing Vista - don't! Vista is not approved to be ran via Boot Camp by Apple. If you somehow lose data or damage your Mac, Apple, Microsoft, nor myself will assist you and I claim no warranties implied or expressed to you. Use this information at your own risk.

Pre-Installation

1: Install Boot Camp and use it to partition your drive for Windows. Vista Ultimate used about 9GB of disk space, so be sure to partition according to your needs. I used a 15GB partition.

2: Boot Camp will ask you to create a Windows drivers disk. You should do this. Once it has finished burning the driver disk, eject it and mark it as Boot Camp drivers 1.1.2.

2a: Boot Camp should ask you to insert the Windows XP disk. However you should insert your Windows Vista installation DVD. It should recognise the Vista disk once it has mounted and it will proceed to reboot your Mac and then load the Vista setup environment.

2b. If it does not recognise the Vista disk, simply restart your Mac, and hold down the "C" key and wait for the boot-loader to pop-up, and then chose the Windows install DVD from there. This should proceed to the Vista install environment.

3: This is the easy part - just let Vista install!

Post-Installation

Vista has completed! Your graphics hardware and ethernet should work, including Aero!

However, the items listed below will not work (Gen 2 MacBook's and MacBook Pro's) .

On a MacBook , the following were not working after the Vista install:

• iSight
• Wifi
• Bluetooth
• Sound

Also the Apple enhancements provided aren't installed:

• Apple Keyboard (eject key, etc)
• Apple Trackpad (2-finger scroll, etc)
• Screen Brightness tool

4a: To remedy this situation, you need to manually install drivers for these items. But first, you will need to extract the drivers (see below) from the Boot Camp drivers from the disk you created prior to the Vista install and labelled Boot Camp drivers 1.1.2.

Extracting Drivers

• Create a folder on the Vista desktop called drivers. Load and open the DVD/CD you burned and copy and paste the exe file found on the disk to the drivers folder on your desktop.
• Open up Command Prompt by typing cmd in the new Windows Vista search/start bar in the Start Menu. Once open, type cd Desktop\drivers
• Nothing will appear to happen, but now type "Install Macintosh Drivers for Windows XP.exe" /A /v

It will take a second for the security prompt to open and when it does click "ok" and it will proceed to extract the drivers into the folder on the desktop.

Installation of drivers

Apple Keyboard Program

Difficulty: Easy

• Go to the drivers folder you created and navigate to: program files\macintosh....drivers\Apple Keyboard\
• Run the Setup.exe found it that folder. This will install the keyboard and on next boot it will recognise all the keys.

Audio

Difficulty: Easy

Go to the same folder as indicated above: program files\macintosh...drivers\SigmaTel and again run setup.exe.

Built-In iSight & WiFi

Difficulty: Intermediate

iSight

• Launch the control panel and get into the device manager. Once you have done this go to the sub-category called "Imaging Devices". Hopefully there is only one item in the list. Right click the item and select "Update Driver Software". Manually install the driver by choosing "Browse My Computer For Driver Software" also tick "Let Me Pick From a List..." and tick "Have Disk".
• Now navigate to the drivers folder on your desktop and find the inf file in the program files\macintosh...drivers\iSight folder. Install the driver.
• iSight should work correctly after this. You may need to install it twice or just tweak and play around.

WiFi

• Whilst in the device manager, navigate to the category for network devices.
• Select the device with the exclamation point on it. If there is more than one do the same remedy set up below for each, individually.
• Right-click on the device and chose "Update driver".
• From here it is easier to simply direct Windows to the drivers folder and allow it to search for the best drivers and allow it to install any 'unsigned drivers'.

Track pad

Difficulty: Intermediate

This will allow for two-finger scroll and right-clicking:

• Go to the device manager and navigate to the "Human Interface Device" section and disable the various "USB Human Interface Devices" until the trackpad stops working.
• Once you found which one it is, re-enable it.
• Now upgrade the driver by forcing it (by manually selecting the driver, don't let it auto-find the right driver). Use the driver in the drivers folder named "aapltp".

Next, you need to upgrade the track pad mouse driver.

• Go to the "Mouse" section in device manager. Again, find out which driver refers to the Track pad by selective disabling, then force a manual upgrade of the driver using the driver in the Boot Camp "aapltctp" driver directory.

Bluetooth

Difficulty: Hard

• In device manager go to the USB devices and individually select all the items listed, however do it in an order that you'll be able to recall those you've checked. You are looking for the the device with a Hardware ID of USB\VID_05AC&PID_1000
• Once you've found it, manually install the driver as you did for iSight, but this time direct Windows to the drivers folder\program files\macintosh...drivers\BthKicker

After the driver is installed Vista will create a new device and automatically install a bluetooth driver for the new device.

Brightness Controller

Difficulty: Hard

This will allow use of fn+F1 or fn+F2 to control the screen brightness just like in Windows XP:

• Go to the drivers folder, but this time navigate to sub-folder System32.
• Copy and Paste Brightness.exe to C:\Windows\System32. It will prompt two or three times to confirm the paste.
• Now right-click on the copied Brightness.exe and select properties.
• Select the tab called "Compatibility" and tick the "Run this program in compatibility mode" also chose "Windows XP Service Pack 2". You must also tick "Run this program as administrator". Click Apply, double check to make sure the settings are correct, then click OK.

Right-click on Brightness.exe again, and create a shortcut. It will say that it cannot create it in the System32 folder and will place it on the desktop instead. Unfortunately Windows Vista requires authorisation to run any application that isn't "signed and certified", therefore simply placing it in the "start-up" folder on the start menu may not work. Until you've rebooted and established that it will indeed auto-load by placing a shortcut in the "start-up" folder, I'd leave another shortcut on the desktop and manually run it as needed.

Alternative

There is a wonderful Input Remapper available over at Insanely Mac. This program essentially gives you all the Function key functionality available in OS X (F1 and F2 Screen Brightness, F3 Mute, F3 and F4 Volume Down and Up, F6 Num Lock, F8 - F10 Keyboard Backlighting controls, F11 and F12 Media Playback controls, CD Eject.

Closing

The preceding text is a summary of posts I made starting on 29 November 2006 in the Apple Discussion Forums.

About the author |