Tag: Windows

MS Windows

BootCamp Drivers direct download for Windows 7 and 8

Updated April 2014

Apple have at long last provided not only direct download links for Windows drivers, but also tables of which link you need for each model/year. If you can work out which model of apple you have, you can now get the direct download link from the apple site.

How to find the correct BootCamp direct download link for your Mac model

  • Go to this page: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5634
  • About half way down the page, find the heading "Boot Camp requirements by Mac model"
  • Under that, find the heading for your Mac model. There are headings for MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, MacBook, iMac, Mac mini and Mac Pro.
  • Each heading hides a table by model & year vs. windows version. There are direct download links for Windows 8 and Windows 7, for 32-bit and 64-bit.
  • Choose your download. Done.

How do I work out which Mac model I have?

  • The same page has instructions. With pictures!

I downloaded. Now what?

  • Each download link includes instructions

But I'm in Windows already, and I can't open this .pkg file download Apple has just given me

Then you want this page: www.cafe-encounter.net/p860/opening-a-bootcamp-driver-download-on-windows-7-or-8-with-7-zip

Only 64-bit drivers are listed but I want 32-bit drivers. Or vice versa

You're stepping into the realm of the unsupported, so you're at your own risk here. What you can try is: get the download you think you want; open it with 7-zip; Now instead of running the installer, open the Folder that contains the individual driver installers. Run each of those. If it doesn't work, you can uninstall from the Windows Control Panel and try again with the drivers Apple said you should use.

My model isn't listed on that Apple page

Ah. Thats sad. You may be looking for the impossible. Your last hope is probably to try this page on older Mac models http://www.cafe-encounter.net/p682/download-bootcamp-drivers For models older than that, you're in the era before BootCamp downloads, and you probably need an OS X Leopard or earlier install CD.

Visual Studio 2012 Command Prompt Here

Something I always want with VS projects: The 'Command Line here' menu option within Visual Studio; and the 'Visual Studio Tools Command Line here' option in Windows explorer. So here they are for VS2012.

NB: that the Explorer right-click works when you right click on a folder icon but not, sadly, when you right click on empty space. If anyone has a solution for that I'll be glad to know.

Windows Explorer "VS2012 Command Prompt Here" Right-Click Menu Item

To add a Visual Studio 2012 Command Prompt Here to your Explorer Right-Click menu, save this as a .reg file to your desktop, and then run it:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Folder\shell\Command Line VS2012]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Folder\shell\Command Line VS2012\command]
@="cmd.exe /k echo on & pushd \"%1\" & \"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\\VC\\vcvarsall.bat\" x86"

If you have 64-bit Windows, you might want:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Folder\shell\Command Line VS2012]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Folder\shell\Command Line VS2012\command]
@="cmd.exe /k echo on & pushd \"%1\" & \"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\\VC\\vcvarsall.bat\" x64"

Visual Studio 2012 External Tools Command Prompt Here Menu Item

In visual studio choose TOOLS - External Tools. Press Add to add a new command with fields as follows:

Title: Command Line Here
Command: %COMSPEC%
Arguments: /K "%VS110COMNTOOLS%\VsDevCmd"
Initial Directory: $(ItemDir)

i.e.:

Visual Studio External Tools Command Line Here VS2012 Dialog Box

Sorted. You can add shortcut key to via TOOLS - Customize - Keyboard and setting a shortcut key for Tools.ExternalCommand{X} ... but you have to work out by counting what number your {X} is.
Visual Studio Customize Keyboard Tools.ExternalCommandX Dialog Box

Apple Official Windows 8 Drivers – BootCamp 5

Apple has at long last published official Windows 8 support - but only for 64 bit Windows and only if you are running OS X 10.8.3. A tad irritating if, as on my machine, Windows 8 installed itself as 32 bit and not 64 bit.

The small print is at Boot Camp 5: Frequently asked questions

BootCamp Drivers direct download—further help

If you've downloaded bootcamp drivers for Macs to run Windows 7 or 8, but still have problems, here's my summary of the main issues and solutions I know of:

  1. The download file won't open; or it doesn't seem to work somehow; or doesn't contain all the drivers you expect Do the download again using a download manager because sometimes the download appears to finish but hasn't really. There are a couple of download managers I know of for OS X:
    Folx by Eltima, who have been doing Mac software for years
    iGetter has been working well for a decade
  2. You get an error message saying that the drivers can't be installed on this computer model.In this case you may have one of 3 problems:
    1. You clicked the wrong download link. Check the instructions on finding your ModelIdentifier again carefully, and try again.
    2. Some Macs only get drivers for 32-bit versions of Windows and some only get drivers for 64-bit versions of Windows so if you install the wrong one, you'll have to start again.
    3. Back to item one – your download didn't work properly. Get a download manager and try it again
  3. If you no longer have OS X on your machine, or if you did the download in Windows anyway, then opening-a-bootcamp-driver-download-on-windows-7-or-8-with-7-zip is the page that explains how to open the pkg file and the dmg file in Windows
  4. And finally the really obscure one: All you get in your download is drivers for a Motoral modem. I'm not sure what's going on here, so I'm grasping at straws but you could try this: in the download URL, replace the http://swcdn.apple.com/ by using nslookup to to see if you can change which server is 'really' serving your download, for instance:
    http://apple.vo.llnwd.net/
    http://swcdn.apple.com.akadns.net/
    http://95.140.227.134/