Windows 8.1 on MacMini 2010 - Drivers

[brdeveloper]

Hello,

I've just updated my bootcamp partition to Windows 8.1. Until then, I had Vista 64 installed and bootcamp drivers were working fine. I wonder if there is a way for having wireless mouse and keyboard drivers working on my system, since my Windows 8.1 is not supported by Apple for installing on a 2010 Mini.

Tried double-clicking on Bootcamp 5 driver installers and it looks like nothing happened.

Any suggestions? Thanks in advance!

 

[brdeveloper]

After googling here and there, and after spending a couple of nights trying to solve the issues, I got Windows 8.1/10 fully working with my Mini. Next I'll explain some of the steps:

1. Get a Bootcamp package suitable for your Mac (in my case, the bundled Bootcamp 3.x from the installation DVDs were fine).

2. With 7-zip, decompress the driver files suitable for your system. In my case, I looked for the following x64 drivers:
- Apple's Broadcom bluetooth driver;
- Apple x64 mouse & keyboard drivers;
- nVidia chipset drivers;
- Cirrus Logic sound driver;

3. Download the latest nVidia driver which support your GPU (320m, in my case);

4. Download the official Broadcom bluetooth driver from Broadcom.

5. Start your system into OSX with a wired keyboard and mouse.

6. Unpair/remove your bluetooth mouse and keyboard.

7. Turn on the computer while holding the Alt key from the wired keyboard to get into the boot menu. Choose Windows.

8. On Windows, install all the required drivers until no warning appears on device manager. Restart.

9. Pair your bluetooth keyboard/mouse on Windows. Restart into OSX and pair them again since you removed them in the last startup.

10. At this point you could remove the wired devices and should have both your mouse and keyboard working (although without the special volume/eject/itunes functions). You'll lose the Bootcamp control panel applet too. It's not too concerning once you can always hold the Option/Alt key to select the system to boot. Since you installed Apple's Broadcom BT driver, you'll get the scrolling function on the magic mouse.