Boot Camp is Apple's solution for booting a Mac directly from Windows instead of Mac OS X. Boot Camps comes with Mac OS X.

Snow Leopard's Boot Camp 3.0 added read-only support for access to the Mac partition from within Windows, enabling Windows users to copy files to the Boot Camp partition, but not the other way around. Previous versions of Boot Camp did not provide any access to the Mac partition. (Mediafour's MacDrive does provide read-write HFS drivers for Windows.)

Boot Camp 3.0 also improves Windows drivers, particularly for trackpads in Mac notebooks. You can now use tap-to-click for a mouse click within Windows. The new drivers are also reported to fix the problem of conflict between the trackpad Windows driver and the NVIDIA graphics driver that could cause crashes with Windows video applications.

Windows users can now control how an Apple Cinema Display power button functions. You can also disable the brightness controls. These functions are included in the Boot Camp control panel. There is also a new command-line feature that enables a system administrator to remotely change the startup disk setting for a Mac running Windows.

Apple released a set of Boot Camp updates aimed at officially supporting Windows 7 and at fixing an incompatibility between new iMacs and Windows 7, specifically the bug that causes the screen to go black when installing Windows 7. The updates include several versions of a general Boot Camp 3.1 update (which addresses several issues), a graphics firmware update for iMacs and Mac Pros, and Windows 7 drivers for iMacs. Apple also provided directions for applying the upgrades to fix the Windows 7 black screen problem. Specifically, these are the updates:

• Boot Camp Software Update 3.1 for Windows 32 bit. This adds support for Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate. Apple said the update also addresses issues with the Apple trackpad. (We've previously reported problems with the trackpad and Windows 7.) Boot Camp 3.1 now supports the Apple Magic mouse and Wireless Keyboard.
• Boot Camp Software Update 3.1 for Windows 64 bit. Addresses the same issues as the above update, but is for 64-bit versions of Windows 7.
• Boot Camp Utility for Windows 7 Upgrade. Apple recommends running this on a Mac before upgrading from Windows Vista to Windows 7.
• iMac Late 2009 Windows 7 Drivers. This driver update is specifically for Windows 7 on the iMac 21.5-inch, Late 2009, and iMac 27-inch, Late 2009. It's important to follow the directions for this update.
• Graphics Firmware Update 1.0 for iMac and Mac Pro. Although Mac firmware updates are often for general computer issues, this one is specifically aimed at running Windows 7 with Boot Camp. The firmware update is for iMacs with NVIDIA GeForce 7300 or 7600 GT and Mac Pros with NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT or Quadro FX 4500.

If you've installed these updates whether they fixed Windows 7 problems.

An Apple support article states that Apple will support Windows 7 in Boot Camp by the end of the year, presumably fixing many of the problems MacWindows readers have reported. However, Apple also says in the article that it will not support Windows 7 in Boot Camp on several iMac, MacBook Pro, and Mac Pro models released in 2006.

Although MacWindows readers have reported running Windows 7 in Boot Camp with (and without) some minor issues, we have reports of Windows 7 not booting on iMacs, appear the result of a video driver issue. We have a number of reports today on this issue.

[NOTE: This bug was fixed with the January 2010 update, described above.]

Apple says that Magic Mouse support for Windows is actually better in the older Boot Camp 2, which came with Leopard, than with Boot Camp 3, which comes with Snow Leopard. Last week's Boot Camp 2.2 update (Leopard) added Magic Mouse vertical scrolling for Windows XP and Vista. Apple tech article TS3039 says that Magic Mouse vertical scrolling in Boot Camp 3 (Snow Leopard) is not supported on most Macs. The article said that vertical scrolling is, however, supported on the iMac released late 2009, but not other Macs. The article also said that two-finger swiping isn't supported in either version of Boot Camp. (Mighty Mouse features are supported in Parallels Desktop 5 and VMware Fusion 3, including in Windows 7.)

David Stubblebine reports that he can't install new Apple drivers that come with Book Camp 3.0, which shipped with Snow Leopard.

On my MacBook first generation (2 GHz Core Duo, 2 GB RAM), I have Snow Leopard and Boot Camp running Windows 7 RC. It works fine, but when I try to install the updated drivers from Boot Camp 3.0 I get the message "The installer encountered errors before Boot Camp could be configured." I've tried uninstalling the old drivers, but I still get the same message. I've also tried running it as an administrator in Windows 7, and in Vista compatibility mode.

If you've seen this

James Greg is another reader who is unable to install Snow Leopard's Boot Camp 3 drivers:

I get exactly the same problem as described by David Stubblebine, but I am on XP SP3 on a MacBook Pro 17 in 2.5Ghz Core 2 Duo. I got round it by installing each driver individually, however Boot Camp is stuck at 2.1.

If you've seen this problem

Several readers wrote with workarounds to the problem of not being able to install the Boot Camp 3 drivers in Windows. (Boot Camp 3 is the version that comes with Snow Leopard.) Both suggestions involve removing older Windows drivers. Randy Syester solved his problem:

I've seen problems updating the Boot Camp drivers. My problem was apps such as LanDesk or Dameware that install drivers for remote control. I removed those drivers and Boot Camp upgraded fine.

Andrew Mole uninstalled another set of drivers:

I thought that it was the SP3 that was causing me problems again, but when I went into the Device Manager and uninstalled all drivers for ¨display adapters¨ apart from ¨Radeon X1600¨ (I had one other called ¨mirror¨ something or other), then the installation went ahead without a hitch.

This post on the discussions.apple website seems to point to problems with apple drivers having been over-written by Windows ones during application of Windows XP service pack 3, and that this then causes problems for the Apple Boot Camp drivers installer.

This is very irritating. Why can't they write a script that will just uninstall the Windows drivers and replace them!?

Doug Rotwitt can't install the Boot Camp 3.0 drivers in Windows:

I have Mac OS X 10.6. Vista Business SP2 runs fine, but I keep getting error messages every time I try to install the Boot Camp 3.0 drivers. I called AppleCare Wednesday morning and have gotten no answer as of this email. (MacBook Pro, 2.33 GHz, 3 GB RAM.)

If you've tried these suggestions

A reader named Jon reported that the problem of not being able to install the Apple Book Camp 3.0 drivers is due to having two display drivers install in Windows. Jon said:

I also was getting an error from the Boot Camp 3.0 installation program. It would quit with an error message and wouldn't let me install the drivers. This was with Windows XP SP3.

I ended up solving it: I had two display drivers. Once I deleted the extra display driver (via Device Manager), the Boot Camp driver installation proceeded without a hitch. Perhaps this post from the Apple forum would be most helpful:

"There are lots of things that cause the installer not to cycle through. The two major are 1) a conflict of some kind with a display driver. 2) a conflict with the language of your currently running Boot Camp 2.0.

If its your Display driver you need to go to -> Control Panel -> System -> Hardware Tab -> Device Manager -> Display Adaptors. Look at how many Display adaptors you have. You really only need one (which sometimes is there twice). If you have more than one then you probably have a program like "GoToMyPc" or LogMeIn" which has put it's display adaptor there. If that is the case then you need to first uninstall the program and then in the Display Adaptors section -> del the driver.

Test if this is the source of your problem by running the installer again.

(P.S) there are a few PC video games and other programs that install Display drivers so if you dont have either of the Remote Access Programs I mentions be aware that that the conflicting Display Driver could be comming from another program. If your problem is a conflict in the language of your running version of Boot Camp then you'll need to do the following in Windows goto Start ->Run -> type "regedit" click OK -> in the new window go to EDIT -> Find -> type "Boot Camp Services. The Boot Camp setting should come up if they did not come up try another search with Boot-Camp Services. Look at the language settings. If you run in English it should have a Value of 0X00000409 (1033). If it does not then modify the info to match. This only works if your set to English. If not then you will need to investigate the values for your language."

If you tried this approach to solving this problem

Brian Johnson can't get his external speakers to work in Boot Camp 3:

I use the Harman-Kardon Soundsticks II on my Mac Pro (2.66GHz, 10.6.1, 9GB Ram) and they work perfectly--from the Mac. On my Boot Camp partition (320GB), I'm using Vista Home Premium, updated last on 09/05/09. This is a 2nd clean install of Vista, which I finished updating as much as possible before adding any programs. My external speakers continue not to work in Vista.

I did the 1st install sometime in 2008 and the speakers worked fine for months, but the output suddenly started coming from the computer's internal speaker, and I couldn't get it back! I know about the Sound Control Panel. It acts like no speakers are attached to the computer.

Do I need updated drivers? I went to Realtek's web site and they basically wouldn't allow me to access their driver download section until I forked up some dough to activate the software it installed to my computer. According to the software, it reported that I had maybe 24 corrupt or out dated drivers, but that leads back to the money issue.

I was hoping installing the Boot Camp 3 drivers would work, but it didn't. I'm open to experiment since I'm not dependent on Windows-but it would be nice to hear my music, and play games with good sound.

If you've seen this problem

N. LaFleur found that installing Realtek drivers in Windows fixed a problem with speakers not working with Boot Camp 3. He warns that the reader who first reported the problem has probably been lead to fake Realtek drivers:

I had the same issue with my MacBook Pro (Late 2007 model which originally shipped with 10.4, but the Apple reps put in 10.5 DVD after launch). Realtek doesn't charge for their drivers. The reader likely searched for "Realtek Drivers" and went to a bogus website (probably a sponsored link on Google). where they "scan" your computer and report problems and drivers that your system "needs" and that you have to pay to get. To get to the actual drivers page follow do this:

1. http://www.realtek.com.tw/DOWNLOADS/
2. Click on High Definition Audio Codecs (Software)
3. Place a check by "I accept to the above." and click Next.
4. Download Either "Vista, Windows7 Driver(32/64 bits) Driver only (Executable file)" or "Vista, Windows7 Driver (32/64 bits) Driver only (ZIP file)" and by selecting any one of the three download sites.
5. Either run the installer once downloaded, or unzip the files and then run the installer.
6. Reboot when finished.

In my experience two out of the three download links will offer something like 5-15kb download speed while one of them will offer 150k+. I would try using each one and let whichever one is fastest finish downloading.

Rod Miller is experiencing the problem of external speakers not working with Boot Camp 3. Unfortunately, a previously reported suggestion didn't work:

My speakers don't work either. I just installed Windows 7 Pro using the latest Boot Camp. Everything is working perfectly except for my Altec stereo speakers. I can barely hear sound at a very low volume with them cranked all the way up. The speakers inside the iMac work fine. When I boot into Mac OS X my satellite speakers work great.

I tried going to Realtek and downloading and installing the 64/32 driver and the 32-bit driver with the same result. I downloaded the latest Boot Camp from Apple last week and then I followed the instructions given at MacWindows on how to download the new Realtek drivers.

If you've seen this problem

Rufus verified a previously reported fix for speaker problems in Boot Camp 3 and Windows 7:

With reference to your February 3 News update about Boot Camp and speakers on Windows 7, I had the same problem on my iMac and I installed the Realtek High Definition Audio Driver from their website. The version number is 6.0.1.5983. This has worked fine for the last 3 weeks.

If you've tried this fix

Edward Yost can't get Bluetooth to work in Boot Camp 3:

I can't use blue tooth devices with Boot Camp Windows XP SP3. also cant play the game medieval total war gold edition -- probably the drivers for an nvidia geforce 9400. It's a 2 GHz GHz Mac mini, 4 MB RAM.

Responding to a report of Bluetooth not working in Boot Camp 3, Marika von Sydow noted that Apple's Bluetooth drivers installed, but others didn't:

Bluetooth (AppleBluetoothEnablerInstaller.exe) installed OK directly from the disc. (Path="DriveLetter"\BootCamp\Drivers\Apple) AppleBluetoothInstaller turned out to be not necessary on my system. However, IR Receiver and Apple Internal Keyboard (of all things) did not complete successfully that way. The track pad did! This is a MacBook (original) - 2GB RAM 250G HD (not original) Snow Leopard Boot Camp running Windows XP Pro.

If you've seen this

Ziga Turk reports three problems with running Windows 7 in Boot Camp 3.0. Most notably, there's a trackpad problem that he says can be dangerous. Turk also reported problems with display and keyboard illumination:

Here's what is quite critical and does not work with on 2009 Unibody 13 inch MacBook Pro and Windows 7 Enterprise RTM (final) version (64 bit):

1. Trackpad. I was reading horror stories about the previous versions, so some may really feel the 3.0 one is an improvement. In fact it has one simple bug. If you drag one finger and lift it while dragging, this is interpreted as a click. It can be very dangerous, especially if you have "click and hold" turned on. This can be easily demonstrated for example in Paint application. Select a pen, than work your finger on trackpad without "clicking". You will start to see the dots appearing.
2. Display brightness. It cannot be reduced to less than 50 percent, so it is always between bright and very bright. This can be disturbing in poorly lit rooms. Even so I am not getting much less autonomy than on OS X, proving that Windows 7 do have very good energy management. Light sensor does not work, but one can live without it.
3. Keyboard illumination. Similarly, the brightness cannot be reduced to less than 50 percent, again draining battery.

To put it briefly, using a MacBook with Windows 7 under Boot Camp 3.0, using the trackpad is dangerous, because you may accidentally move files around and do other harm to your texts, spreadsheets.

If you've seen these problems with Boot Camp 3 and Windows 7

Greg Divers responded to the report Boot Camp 3.0 and Windows 7 problems with Trackpad, illumination:

Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit works fine. Just the keyboard illumination I can't stop. The trackpad work fine.

If you've seen one of these problems

Robb Rinard can't get Windows 7 to boot on a new iMac with Boot Camp 3. He found that the vga.sys isn't loading:

I purchased a brand new 27" iMac today as they unloaded them off the truck at Best Buy. It's the version with the ATI video. I ran Boot Camp 3 and split the 1TB drive into to 460GB partitions and Windows 7 installed cleanly with no problems. When it rebooted and was starting Windows for the first time (finishing the installation), I see the Windows red/green/blue/yellow animated logo for ten seconds, then the screen goes black and it hangs infinitely.

I tried booting safe mode and it says I need to let Windows 7 installation finish before booting safe mode.

I dug deeper and found you can cause windows to log all it's boot activity. All drivers load, except that vga.sys did NOT load. (NDProxy.SYS also didn't load.) That's a big honking problem. You won't have any display if vga.sys doesn't load, until you get booted and install the ATI drivers for Windows 7.

[NOTE: This bug was fixed with the January 2010 update, described above.]

Three readers sent in suggestions for video driver problems with booting Windows 7 in Boot Camp 3 on an iMac. One was to run a repair computer option during the boot process. Another saw the problems on a real PC. A third said only 64-bit has the problem, that 32-bit Windows 7 works fine.

1. Terry Thiel sent a procedure for fixing driver issues with Windows 7 in Boot Camp 3 on iMacs:

Connect a USB keyboard and mouse, then follow these steps:

Run the Boot Camp Assistant in OS X as normal and create a partition when asked, then insert your Windows 7 disc to reboot and begin the process proper. Windows 7 requires the NTFS file system, so once in the installer just select your new partition (labelled BOOTCAMP), click on Drive options (Advanced) and choose to format it.

Then select the newly formatted partition and continue. Windows 7 will begin installing, and once it gets almost to the bottom of its checklist, it'll try to reboot. Now, if you leave it here, you'll get so far and see the black screen. Any further attempts to reboot will bring you to the same dead end.

Instead, restart and press a key to boot from the Windows 7 disc when prompted. Rather than running the installation again, choose the little option at the bottom to Repair your computer. Decline any suggestions that pop up until you see a list of options with Command Prompt at the bottom. Choose that option. At the Command Prompt, type DEL C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ATIKMDAG.SYS to delete the default ATI driver, then close the window and reboot. This time, Windows should successfully initialise a more appropriate display driver, allowing you into the desktop. From here insert your OS X disc to install the relevant hardware drivers as you normally would, then run Windows update to clear up any leftovers.

NOTE: since this was published, we received more detail on this suggestion, posted below.

If you've tried this suggestion

2. Harold Kitching saw the problem on a Compaq PC, and ran Windows updates:

I had the same problem when I installed Windows 7 on an inexpensive Compaq laptop that I use for occasional meetings. The problem was resolved when I ran Windows updates, which downloaded and installed the required VGA update.

3. Plug in a second disply. Robb Rinard updated his previous report about Windows 7 black-screening on an iMac in Boot Camp 3 when trying to boot. (He previously said that vga.sys wasn't loading.) He narrowed it down to the 64-bit version of Windows 7. The 32-bit works:

I did a bunch more testing today and came up with the following:

• The black screen problem is that for some reason, Windows 7 running on this new ATI 4670 card sends the video to the secondary monitor, leaving the primary display black. If you merely plug another monitor into the Mac, you get display just fine.
• After 4 attempts I gave up trying to install Windows 7 64-bit on the Mac 27". It fails on the final reboot and just restarts setup over and over.

I got a copy of Win 7 Pro 32-bit and it installed fine on the first try on the same new iMac. It seems the 64 version has some issues.

If you've tried these suggestions

Bill Milligan was looking for a fix to the same problem:

I have the same exact problem. I get no video after the 4 colors when booting to Windows 7 after installation. If I hit Enter then it reboots so I am stuck in a loop.

James Hastings-Trew had success with the procedure for deleting a driver to fix problems with running Windows 7 on Boot Camp 3 on iMacs:

I tried this tip from your Boot Camp 3 Tips page and it worked like a charm. Thank you! Saved me ages of grief.

However, it did not work for Neil Bowen:

I tried doing this and it said that the driver did not show up. A matter a fact, everything I try doesn't seem to work.

If you've tried this, please how it worked.

Daniel Gómez, in Spain, sent another procedure for removing the ATIKMDAG.SYS driver from Windows 7 in order to make it run in Boot Camp 3. We've had two previous reports, here and here, from readers who provide procedures on how to do this. Gómez' differs in that he never got to the Repair Computer option or a command prompt, as previously described. Gómez' found away around it:

I've solved the problem with the following procedure:

1. Run Boot Camp from Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.2
2. Install Windows 7
3. Wait untill the loading Windows 7 screen so my screen turns black
4. Reset iMac holding "alt" key so you can load Snow Leopard again.
5. Run any application that let you work with NTFS partitions (in my particulary case I used MacFuse)
6. Go to Bootcamp partition, search for "C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ATIKMDAG.SYS" and move it to trash bin so we remove it from the system.
7. Restart Windows 7 and it will finally load on your iMac Screen, then run update windows utility and install other drivers from OS X disc.

Hope it helps our MacWindows fellows!

I had to figure that procedure because the tip posted by John Voss (Repair Computer option to get to a command prompt and deleted the file) didn't work for me since my Windows 7 release never showed the Repair Computer option but instead would force me to reinstall windows or continue with the latest installation that would send me against the black screen again.

So for those who can't access the command prompt or don't have a second monitor to plug they can try my suggestion as it worked like a charm for me and I'm pretty sure will work for anyone

A reader named Phil found that the first description worked: Terry Thiel's tip worked for me. Thanks!