I’ve been a mac user off and on since 2002; It wasn’t until early 2008 that I moved strictly to using a mac for my everyday affairs. I thought it would be a nice gesture to once in a while throw up quick Macintosh related tips, especially as it pertains to my early 2008 13.3″ Macbook.
Right now Windows 7 nor 64bit OSes are officially supported by Apple for this particular model of Macbooks. Officially the only non-pro macbook that should be able to install bootcamp onto Vista 64bit is the late 2009 13-inch Macbook.
There is however a quick way to get around this, and in my particular case using Windows 7 x64.
Normally you would execute the setup executable from your OSX installation DVD, in my case Snow Leopard 10.6. But instead once we’ve installed Windows 7 (x64), we’ll want to type ‘cmd’ into the run prompt. However be sure to right click it and select ‘Run As Administrator’.
Once the command line interface has appeared, navigate your way to the installation DVD, followed by the Apple Driver’s folder.
cd D: cd drivers\apple
Within the folder you’ll notice a pair of msi files, these are installers. However trying to execute these from windows explorer will complain that they need to be run from an installation shell with administrative ownership. However since we’re running cmd as an Administrator we can simply run the msi package.
BootCamp64.msi
If your luck was as good as mine, this should install everything successfully.
Mighty and Magic Mouse
In some cases you may notice that your mighty and/or magic mouse may stop functioning after successfully installing the bootcamp drivers. What happened was me, was I could not connect to either device. The quick fix for this was to reboot into OSX , and remove or un-pair the mouse from OSX. Then from there you should be able to connect to the mouse in Windows. Reconnecting the mouse on the OSX side did not break the relationship on windows.
The mighty mouse for the most part will function fully with the scroll ball and side buttons. The magic mouse however would not scroll without a small hack found here: Uneasy Silence, where I downloaded the 64bit installer.
The mighty mouse as well as the macbook’s trackpad worked quite exceptionally in Windows 7, with all the normal functions I expected such as tap to click/right-click. The Magic mouse on the other hand after installing the hack, did work, but was a little quirky at times. Worst case scenario was to fall back to the trackpad which worked fine.
Why 64-bit
I don’t wish to get into a lengthy discussion about the benefits or disadvantages for that matter of 64-bit version 32-bit, which can be found numerously online. But simply put I did not like to waste a 1GB of my 4GB rams due to being forced to use the 32-bit version of Windows in Bootcamp.
Why Windows 7
Personal preference mainly. The combination of Windows 7 with Bootcamp 3.0 made it more ideal to be up with the times while still enjoying the stability I had with Windows XP but UI improvements of Vista. Also Bootcamp 3.0 brings HFS+ reading capabilities to Windows making it easier to access files on the Mac Side. While you cannot write to HFS+ partitions without using additional software, it is useful either way. I spend 98% of my time on the OSX side, normally I would just open VmWare Fusion to run XP in order to determine how my work appears under Internet Explorer. Installing Windows 7×64 via Bootcamp was a “Because I could” move more than anything else.
Hopefully these quick tips may help someone who has a stronger reason to run Windows 64-bit on their Mac, especially those not officially supported by Apple. Remember you need at least an Intel Core 2 Duo processor to even think about running 64-bit on your Mac.
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