Want to use your nice shiny Apple wireless keyboard on a native install of Windows (ie. not a Bootcamp setup)? We recently had to play around with this ourselves for a project, and discovered it can be a little troublesome (note that the following is assuming you use a USB Bluetooth dongle, mileage may vary when other other forms of Bluetooth hardware).
First and foremost, throw away the driver CD that came with your dongle. You need to use the standard windows bluetooth drivers for this, unfortunately this will mean you cannot use some of the more advanced Bluetooth features such as Audio Gateway (if you have already installed these drivers, simply remove your device from device manager and setup again). If you do require more features from your Bluetooth than the standard drivers will allow then you may have success using an older driver such as Widcomm 1.5.x.
If this does not work right away then you can force the keyboard to pair with a specific passkey:
- Goto ‘Start’, choose Run and then type regedit and press enter to access windows registry editor.
- Into the registry editor search for and select -> HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Widcomm\BtConfig\General
- Set the key ‘PinCodeWord’ to a decimal value of 1111
- Set the key ‘UseFixedPin’ to a decimal value of 1
- Restart your computer.
- Then attempt pairing, which will give you a greyed PIN screen.
- Type 1111 using wired keyboard.
- Type 1111 using Apple Bluetooth keyboard.
- Press the ‘Return’ key on the Apple keyboard.
- Enjoy your nice Keyboard.
If after this you still encounter problems it may be worth installing the apple keyboard drivers, which can be found on a Leopard install disc under the BootCamp / Drivers section, and repeating the above (we also installed the bluetooth and null drivers just in case).
It may be the case that after you enter the ‘1111′ code on both keyboards and hit enter on the wireless keyboard a pairing code is displayed in the connection wizard. If this is the case then quickly enter this code (before the connection wizard times out) on both keyboards as with the ‘1111′ code, and again hit enter on the wireless keyboard.
Hopefully following some or all of the instructions above should mean your Apple wireless keyboard is now working in Windows, minus a few of the special function keys of course! If you still have issues with pairing (any dialogue boxes popping up with pairing errors, or no keycode being displayed), you can also try disabling and removing the keyboard from ‘my bluetooth places’ and adding again.
Another foolproof way to get this to work is of course to install OS X, but this isn’t for everyone!
-UPDATE-
It appears there is also an issue with some early Intel Macs and the newer aluminium keyboard (wireless and wired) when trying to enter boot commands (such as ejecting external media, clearing PRAM etc). Thankfully this is nice and easy to fix, just ensure you are up to date with all Apple system updates! (see the thread at Apple Discussions here).
