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Aug 10 2007

Apple new Aluminium keyboard Boot Camp 1.4 Windows drivers

Categories: Hardware Jonx @ 01:08

Because of popular demand and because others are already offering to download the drivers here are the drivers that concerns us directly.

Of course you understand that the official files can be found on Apple's Boot Camp web site. I just provide them here because it is pretty hard for a basic Windows user to get them. The files I provide here are those I extracted myself from the CD. Of course you have to take your own precaution to make sure the files don't have viruses or troyans Laughing Let me know if you think the files have problems.

Thanks to Joan for the link. Go there if you need more drivers.

To make the new keyboard work on your system, first install the keyboard driver:

AppleKeyboardInstaller.exe (1.60 mb)

It supports the following languages : DE, EN, ES, FR, IT, JA, NL and zh_CN.

This will make the standard keys work and some special keys like Next, Pause, Play, Play fast (stay pressed on >>) because they are the same on a PC keyboard.

To make the other keys (sound up, down, eject CD) work you will need the BootCamp control panel. That program is meant to help you configure the different hardware of your mac under Windows.

Get it here:

BootCamp.msi (1.70 mb) 

That program does install a KbdMgr.exe to C:\Program Files\Boot Camp

Unfortunately I don't have mac hardware and because it looks like the Apple programmers expect to find mac hardware the tool is not working perfectly. For example, you cannot open and configure any of the Apple control panel feature. A usefull feature would have been to control the behavior of the fn key.

Thomas is suggesting to change the value of the key at:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\KeyMagic\OSXFnBehavior
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\KeyMagic\OSXFnBehavior

Set it to 0 (zero) for off and to 1 for on by default. I have not yet tested this and he says that it may cause problems.

Also a restart of the system may be required. In case you have problems you can try to unplug and plug again your keyboard.

Also the Apple Control panel does sometimes not start automaticaly. Sometimes it crashes. Sometime is makes your PC freeze for about 20 seconds. Sometimes (seldom) Windows freezes definitiveky and will require a hard reset. This is what it does for me.

Sometimes I don't launch the boot Camp control panel because I often press the eject CD key instead of backspace. Because I have an Antec tower with a door hiding the CD slot I have to rush and open the door before the CD is killing itself against the closed door.

Have fun using this and don't hesitate to report problems in Apple's forum. Also you may write to bootcamp@apple.com.

Of course come here to share your tips with us. Thank you.

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Comments

August 11. 2007 12:53

Thanks for the guides and the files. I've got everything working but the insert key which is replaced with the Fn key. On the bootcamp help and websites it says to use the Help key which as far as I see doesn't exist. Any ideas?

Cheers

Fletch

August 11. 2007 20:15

The dashboard is buggy, that is correct. but without it, the special keys are not working. so we need to let it run despite the fact it does not do much.

Jonx

August 11. 2007 21:59

Hello Fletch,
Nice to hear it is also working for you.
I added a new post with a very small tool that you migth find usefull to change the status of the fn key.

Because the Apple control panel does not work for us you cannot do that, other then by changing a key in the registry.

Jonx

August 12. 2007 01:21

Hi
I just buy the aluminum keyboard for my vista, I tried to use it with a French layout, it work well with alphabet characters but all signs don't correspond to the Apple keyboard, even putting the drivers provided here.
Is it normal ?

Tetsujin28

August 12. 2007 02:07

Well I didn't use the installer provided here, I did the complete bootcamp DMG extraction and execute the setup, now the french keyboard layout is correct, the bootcamp dashboard create an error on execution so it can't be use for the moment

Tetsujin28

September 4. 2007 12:03

None of the programs will install on my pc with vista 64-bit

Bootcamp.msi says something about not accessing a key (and wont install)

Applekeyboardinstaller.exe doesn't even run at all (nothing happens when I launch it)

insats

September 5. 2007 16:37

hello,
nobody reported having success with that on vista 64 bits. sorry.

Jonx

September 11. 2007 11:00

Yep, same, the driver is 32bit only. Bootcamp does NOT support Vista x64. We are out of luck I'm afraid.

Squuiid

October 14. 2007 19:29

Thanks for this. I managed to set up my International slim/aluminum/wired keyboard using the above drivers/control panel. The control panel does lock up my system for 10ish seconds when it loads, but I'll take the hit to have proper mapping.

One thing that I didn't resolve was the # key (hash/pound/octothorpe key). Because my keyboard is the International English layout (not the US one), in Mac OS X I can use SHIFT+3 to get the symbol, but that doesn't work in Win XP. This Apple Discussions thread http://url.ie/6gw does show a rather complex workaround if anyone is in the same boat.

cgarvey

December 20. 2007 02:32

First of all thanks. I got the wired aluminium keyboard working even the function keys and I can simply change the behavior of them by opening up the boot camp control panel, but the one thing that annoys me is that if I press the play button the windows media player opens. Has anyone found a way to bind another program to that key?

go die big city

December 21. 2007 14:01

Is the key combination ALT + TAB working with your Apple Keyboards? It doesn't work for me :-(

Steffen

December 22. 2007 05:54

It is for me. since day one... no problem at all...
Have you tried it on another computer?
It should work even without the drivers...

Jonx

December 28. 2007 20:58

Ok, it seems to work. But I have to press ENTER extra. And I don't have this review of the program icons. Is this normal?
I'll try it on another computer.

Steffen

December 30. 2007 01:02

Sorry I don't understand what you mean. but yes, a try on another computer won't hurt...

Jonx

January 12. 2008 16:33

Does anyone have a fix for the 10 second lockup by kbdmgr? I'd really love it Tong

Andreasg

January 13. 2008 07:52

Me too... the problem is that the lookup seems to be caused by the fact that the keyboard manager is trying to find Apple hardware... So only Apple can do something for us here Frown

Jonx

January 27. 2008 00:14

So for vista 64 bits I can`t use the play/pause volume down and up functions?? Hope it changes soons!! With that I will be really happy!!

puntoloco

January 27. 2008 15:48

Hello puntoloco,
Is it a question or are you telling that the buttons are not working? As far as I know, there is nothing new except the fact that it's 64 bits...

Jonx

February 14. 2008 08:58

10x!!!

Gho57

March 2. 2008 13:22

I have a PC, and I'm trying to use the new aluminum bluetooth keyboard on an XP computer. I can get the bluetooth neighborhood to detect the keyboard.. But as soon as I pick connect/pair, it hits an error and won't let me go any further.

From what i've read, it's because the keyboard frequency hops?

I got bootcamp.msi to run, but the applekeyboardinstaller.exe doesn't run.

Any help? Ankur394 at hotmail.com

ports

March 3. 2008 08:12

Hello,
I took the one with wires to be sure not to get problems like that Wink

Just note, that when you say: "applekeyboardinstaller.exe doesn't run." it probably means that it worked and is already installed... you can be sure by looking in your list of installed programs. You should have the keyboard driver listed there...

Jonx

June 24. 2008 13:41

Anyone know why I get locked out of the Boot Camp control panel?

When I try to open it, I am told there is an error opening the startup disk, and that I may not have sufficient privileges. I'm an admin user of my XP Fusion virtual machine, and of course an admin user of my underlying Leopard mac.

I haven't installed a Boot Camp partition but have installed the Boot Camp drivers to access Bluetooth etc, and now I want to use Boot Camp to remap keys on my thin Al keyboard.

Ormot

June 25. 2008 05:33

I may be wrong but I think that nobody is able to use the control panel with widows on non apple hardware. It's probably due to the fact that the control panel is looking for specific hardware like fan for example and as it can't find anything, just crashes with a non meaningfull error message. That's bad programming, they should check if the hardware exists and if it isn't, then move on...

Jonx

July 26. 2008 12:45

tx to you i managed to set up the apple wireless aluminium keyboard for my tablet pc (windows vista) - which is great Smile

grs

July 27. 2008 12:13

Excellent.

Also take a look here: http://brrp.mine.nu/fnkey/
This seems to work in the case you have the wireless keyboard. Let us know what it gives in case you give it a try...

Jonx

August 9. 2008 09:37

Is there a fix for Vista 64bit yet - Just bought the keyboard - and would like the shortcuts to work.


Frederik Friche

August 9. 2008 09:37

great forum btw !

Frederik Friche

August 13. 2008 17:54

It does not work better in x64 but at least you have the drivers now. When I bought my keyboard the x64 drivers didn't exist.

Jonx

August 18. 2008 08:21

Hello Jonx, I have a problem with my apple keyboard(wired), the keyboard was used to work well on my PC+Win XP system for last three months.
But it did not work after I unplug it from the USB port last week. The XP said "a new usb device" when I plug the keyboard on again. So I tried the dirver here, but it seemed that nothing happened after I launch the driver. Now I could not use this nice keyboard anymore. Can you help me out? Thank you!

My CPU is is P4 3.0G, it seems that the windowx XP is 64 bit. Is the 64bit a problem? Thank you!

Robert

September 2. 2008 06:50

I installed this on my work computer and it worked perfectly (XP Professional SP3) and now when I'm at home, the software keyfeatures work, but I can't open the controlpanel to apply the setting that the Fn-key has to be used in combination with F10 for example to access the software keyfeatures.

Does anyone know what to do?

Thanks in advance.

Babbas

September 5. 2008 20:29

Hello, AKAIK, the control panel application does only work on real Apple hardware.

Jonx

September 17. 2008 12:24

PC+Win XP system for last three months.
But it did not work after I unplug it from the USB port last week.

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September 30. 2008 03:08

What a nice post... very interesting.. thanks for this my friend...

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