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Jim Scott Author

Level 1

18 points

Trick for Pairing Bluetooth Keyboard and Mouse With Windows 7 in BC 3.1

My Mac:
Mid-2007 iMac 20", 2.4 GHz; OS X 10.6.2; Windows 7 Home; Boot Camp 3.1

My Problem:
No matter what I tried, including all kinds of tips and tricks found in this forum and elsewhere on the web, I could not get my Apple aluminum bluetooth keyboard and bluetooth Mighty Mouse to pair in Windows 7. Windows 7's bluetooth setup panel would see them, from time to time, but never connected.

The same pair connected quite easily with Snow Leopard, and the keyboard connected before I installed BC 3.1 in Win 7 (never did get the MM to connect in Win 7 with BC 3.0). But with BC 3.1 in Win 7, it was no dice for either one until I made an accidental discovery.

While prepping another Apple bluetooth aluminum keyboard for my wife's Mac Mini, it was seen by my iMac's Win 7, which wanted to pair with it.

Aha! A Big Clue! The Win 7 BC 3.1 generic bluetooth drivers wanted to pair with an aluminum keyboard that wasn't already paired with the iMac. So, I booted back into Snow Leopard, connected a USB mouse and keyboard, renamed the bluetooth mouse and keyboard, and then deleted them. I rebooted back into Win 7, then easily set up both renamed mouse and keyboard which paired quickly with Windows.

Note that I first tried deleting them from the Snow Leopard side first, but Win 7 still wouldn't pair with them. That's when I went back to Snow Leopard and renamed them but didn't pair them with the iMac until it was booted into Win 7.

Finally, I rebooted back into Snow Leopard and paired the keyboard and mouse with OS X. Done.

Hope this trick/tip/hint helps someone else with keyboard and mouse bluetooth pairing problems.

iMac 2.4 20" (Mid-2007), Mac OS X (10.6.2), Windows 7 Home, Boot Camp 3.1

Posted on Jan 22, 2010 7:36 PM

40 replies

Jim Scott Author

Level 1

18 points

Feb 23, 2010 9:46 PM in response to anton_l

Glad to hear that my discovery works on a MacBook too. Which bluetooth mouse and keyboard were you using?

Mar 10, 2010 8:13 PM in response to Jim Scott

Jim.. FYI, if you accidentally post your message before you complete the message, you still have 20 minutes to edit the posted message... look for a little "pencil over a comment bubble" icon beside the reply button.

Ta.

MIRTTB

Level 1

0 points

May 12, 2010 4:11 AM in response to Jim Scott

Pairing a Logitech Bluetooth mouse in W7 w/Bootcamp 3.1 drivers.

I can successfully pair the device, but it drops the "pairing" with every restart. The device is still installed and should be available but W7 will not pair with it on start-up, nor can I "repair" it from the existing device.

I have to delete and then reinstall the mouse from the <Hardware and Sound> Devices and Printers> control panel. Just right-click on the device,click "remove device" and then "add a device" from the same control panel toolbar. Once the device is removed, the pairing process is routine. I did download the Logitech drivers but the operating system, when paired, seems to be using the Bootcamp mouse drivers with only generic information in the mouse properties tab.

The simplest way I've found but you have to do it on every start.

Note that W7 is technically not supported for my machine.

May 20, 2010 2:07 PM in response to Jim Scott

Don't mean to sound like an idiot here, but I am, so here goes:
When you say rename the mouse or keyboard, how exactly do you do that?

Jim Scott Author

Level 1

18 points

May 31, 2010 4:13 PM in response to Sox Fan 670

First, go to the Bluetooth pane in System Preferences (or click on the bluetooth icon in the menu bar and then select Open Bluetooth Preferences) and click on it. The Bluetooth window that opens has two panes; go to the left one which has all your bluetooth devices listed. At the bottom of that pane are three icons: plus, minus, and a wheel/flower. Click on the wheel/flower. One of the options is to Rename your bluetooth device(s). That's where/how you can rename your bluetooth devices. Pretty simple, huh?

Jun 3, 2010 1:44 AM in response to Jim Scott

Will all the features of the mm work as I was able to connect before but the scrolling would on work up and down. No left and right and no back and forward. Is there anyway I can get the full features of the mm to work on windows bootcamp

djz123

Level 1

0 points

Jun 7, 2010 12:13 AM in response to Jim Scott

When I was installing Windows 7 it made my format the drive as NTFS. Now when I am in mac I can't select the windows as the startup disc so I have to press the option key on the keyboard to get to windows. Beacuse I have to be able to press the option key I cannot unpair the keyboard in os x beacuse then on reboot I cannot press the option key to boot into windows. I have a extra usb mouse I pluged in and it works but don't have a usb apple keyboard to plug in to press the option key on boot.

any suggestions?

Jim Scott Author

Level 1

18 points

Jun 7, 2010 5:32 PM in response to djz123

All Win 7 installs on a compatible Mac will be on an NTFS volume. To select the Boot Camp Win 7 volume as the startup volume while in OS X, go to System Preferences>Startup Disk and select it. Then restart in Win 7. That way you don't have to press the Option key and you don't need a USB keyboard.
Good luck!

djz123

Level 1

0 points

Jun 8, 2010 12:50 PM in response to Jim Scott

When I go to systems preferences ---->Startup disk the only thing I can see is the Mac, not the windows 7 disk. The only way to see the see the windows disk is to press the option key to boot to it.

any other suggestions are appreciated.

Although I do wonder why I can't see the windows 7 disc from system preferences. I had assumed that it was due to NTFS.

Jim Scott Author

Level 1

18 points

Jun 8, 2010 1:47 PM in response to djz123

It sounds as if there's some corruption of volume information on your Mac OS X partition, which is why Win 7 isn't showing as a bootable volume in Startup Disk. If you've got a copy of Disk Warrior compatible with your Mac OS, I suggest running that to fix any directory/volume information errors. Or you can try running First Aid in Disk Utility on the Mac OS volume (it won't work on the Win 7 volume, and don't run Disk Warrior on the Win 7 volume either).

You also may have a munged Win 7 install, especially if you've set a Boot Camp partition, then erased it and started over again.

At any rate, your problem seems to have gone from bluetooth pairing to something entirely different, though related. I suggest you either start another thread about booting into Win 7 or dig through other threads on that general subject.

djz123

Level 1

0 points

Jun 20, 2010 3:57 PM in response to Jim Scott

OK, I went ahead and reformated and reinstalled windows 7 and can now select windows 7 from in Mac and can now boot to windows with no problem but I still can't use my bluetooth mouse or keyboard in windows. I went into the Mac and unpaired it and then booted to windows and when I try to paid the mouse it just never finished but then when I pair the keyboard i actually get a message. This time when I installed windows 7 I used the bootcamp 3.1 drivers hopeing that would help but it's still not working.

Any suggestions?

Jim Scott Author

Level 1

18 points

Jun 20, 2010 4:54 PM in response to djz123

Yep. Read my original post, the first one in this thread. Probably the most critical step was the renaming of the mouse and keyboard in OS X.

My take on why my procedure works is that for some reason Win 7 doesn't want to pair with already named bluetooth devices that have been paired previously by Snow Leopard.

Follow my original procedure exactly and you should meet with success. You may have to borrow a USB keyboard and mouse. If you still have a problem and you've got AppleCare on your Mac, contact Apple. Beyond that, I don't have any magic bullets for you.

Sep 6, 2010 3:15 PM in response to Jim Scott

I just had this problem too. This is really stupid I hope that I won't have too much trouble switching back and forth between Windows and Mac OS now.
I'll be keeping an eye out for how this progresses.

pdc1131

Level 1

0 points

Nov 8, 2010 6:14 PM in response to tacutamon

Thank you so much. I have been trying on and off, for about a year to get my bluetooth mouse to work on the Windows 7 side, Nothing worked. Now because of your input its working fine. Thank's again.

Nov 16, 2010 7:58 PM in response to MIRTTB

I have a similar problem. I run Windows 7 with bootcamp 3.1 all the time on my PowerBook Pro 17" and I have Logitech v470 bluetooth mouse. I paired the mouse without much problems but it tends to disappear when computer coming from sleep mode (i.e. opening the lid). This more likely to happen if running on batteries. After that it MAY come back in 3-10 minutes if I'm lucky (as if nothing happened) or it may stay this way forever, but reboot helps. I usually survive with touch pad during this time, but it is extremely annoying and touch pad has it's own quirks under Windows 7.

Trick for Pairing Bluetooth Keyboard and Mouse With Windows 7 in BC 3.1