Macbook Air + Fusion + Win XP?

[silverblack]

Anyone using their MBA with VMWare Fusion running Windows XP?

If so, could you please tell me if your built-in iSight is working in Windows?

Thanks in advance.

 

[richard.mac]

the iSight camera will work in Windows when you install the Boot Camp drivers on the first restore DVD but the the quality is worse (i find) and there is no Photo Booth. i suppose you could use it with for video conferencing in Windows but i have no use for it.

MBAs have pretty small hard drives and a Windows install would work best on a 10 gig partition (5 gig minimum) so you would have only 50 gigs left for OS X if you have the 60 gig MBA.

 

[n0de]

I just tried and was a bit surprised it did not work.

I did figure it out though.

On the status bar of the VM, on the lower right hand side, you should see several icons, the first 3 are USB symbols. Click once on each one until you figure out which one is the iSight and click "Connect iSight", it will then go through the standard Windows installing new hardware bit.

Of course you will not find the drivers

They are apparently on the Leopard disk, but after a little surfing I found old ones at http://makel.org/articles/53/

The ones from makel are for a macbook pro, the MBA is a little different. If you want to use them you need to edit the iSight.inf file so that the lines under [Apple] are like below:
%isight.DeviceDesc%=iSight,USB\VID_05AC&PID_8505&MI02

Then update the driver from Device Manager, you will get an error, but if you open the Camera and Scanner Wizard you will see it works. I do not have any IM SW installed, so I cannot test it any other way.
Good luck, you are probably just better off using the CD.

Good luck.

 

[silverblack]

The ones from makel are for a macbook pro, the MBA is a little different. If you want to use them you need to edit the iSight.inf file so that the lines under [Apple] are like below:
%isight.DeviceDesc%=iSight,USB\VID_05AC&PID_8505&MI02

Then update the driver from Device Manager, you will get an error, but if you open the Camera and Scanner Wizard you will see it works. I do not have any IM SW installed, so I cannot test it any other way.
Good luck, you are probably just better off using the CD.

Good luck.

THANK YOU! Finally someone agrees with me that there's something not right about the existing boot camp driver.

I followed your instruction and edited the iSight.inf file. By the way, there was an underscore missing. It should read:
%isight.DeviceDesc%=iSight,USB\VID_05AC&PID_8505&MI_02

As you described, there was some error and it didn't completely installed all files of the driver. Nevertheless, the iSight did work.

 

[n0de]

It looks like there are 3 models of camera mentioned in the inf file, probably the original built in, then the current MB and current MBPro models. Apple must not have updated it for the MBA model which actually has a lower resolution.

Glad to be of help, I guess my days as a Windite were not completely wasted.

 

[silverblack]

I want to also add that it's not just the driver you got from http://makel.org/articles/53/ that has this problem.

The ones in boot camp directory in the dvd that came with my MBA also has this problem (both isight.inf files are in face the same).

That means Apple shipped MBAs without the proper boot camp drivers for the iSight... and apparently no one else noticed this problem.

I guess not too many actually owe the MBAs. Those that have one, probably did not bother running Windows due to its teeny HDD. And those that were dumb enough to run Windows, like myself, probably didn't care much about the iSight.

 

[Liquid Q8]

hi all

here a walkthrough about that ^^
http://blog.lib.umn.edu/ayubx003/dividebyzero/2008/07/01/how_to_get_isight_working_with.html