Ho do I use one monitor for OSX and Windows 8.1 bootcamp

Question

Ho do I use one monitor for OSX and Windows 8.1 bootcamp

I am a long time Mac user, but find the fairly recent Apple switch to thunderbolt for monitor input very frustrating.

For several years I have ran a Mid 2010 IMac 27" and input video from a Mac Mini running Boot Camp Windows 7 using Target Display Mode on the IMac.

This worked fine until I upgraded to a Late 2013 27" IMac and discovered that the IMac has moved to thunderbolt as the input for Target Display Mode. The new late 2013 27" IMac just will not display native Windows 7 or 8 from a Boot Camp Mac anymore.

My problem is that I have two business/job related Windows apps that must run on a native windows 7 or 8 platform, and won't function under either Parallels or VMWare Fusion.

I have tried.

And there appears to be no way to get any Windows machine with DVI or Mini Display Port output to drive a late 2013 IMac in Target Display mode.

So, with great frustration, I have concluded that I need to purchase a non-Apple 27-30" monitor, and drive it with either a Mac Mini, or my Early 2013 15" MacBook Pro retina, running one of the Macs into on of the mini-Display Ports on the monitor and a native Windows 7 or 8 machine into a second mini-display port, switching between the two video inputs. The Dell 30" monitor seems to get the nod.

Has anyone found a better solution to switching between OSX and native Windows on one monitor?

Thanks...

Posted on Jul 12, 2014 2:11 PM

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Answer 1

atmosema

Level 1

14 points

Dec 26, 2014 1:24 PM in response to William Mcclatchey1

Hi William,

I had the same experience in December 2013 and contacted Apple about it. According to Apple it's an issue of Windows with Thunderbolt. Your older iMac from 2010 is using DisplayPort and not Thunderbolt for the Target Display Mode. Note that just the connector looks the same but it's still a different technology. Please further note that the response below does not apply for the new iMac 27" with the 5K display because this iMac does not support Target Display Mode at all, hence can't be used as external display. Of course you can still attach one or two external displays to the iMac 27" 5K.

Hope this clears things up for you and the others.

Thanks,
Martin

So, here is the important part of the official response from Apple:

"... The Thunderbolt controller in an iMac is running exclusively in host mode. As such it cannot emulate a device mode Thunderbolt display. Instead it implements a custom Target Display Mode protocol that shares video between two peer to peer machines running with both controllers running in host mode. The "client" side of the driver does not exist on Windows so windows cannot speak to the "server" half in the iMac. There are no plans to implement a client driver for Windows since there is no Thunderbolt SW stack available for Windows. The reason this used to work is that the older iMacs used DisplayPort for Target Display Mode. In this scenario the iMac was able to expose the panel in such a way that it looked exactly like a Display Port Device which Windows does have driver support for. ... "

Target Display Mode: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) - Apple Support

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Answer 2

ThorH

Level 1

3 points

Sep 25, 2015 4:33 AM in response to atmosema

This does not work on my mid 2011 27" iMac either. 😟 I find it very strange that Apple has not written a driver or something (display emulator?) to make it work with Windows on the laptop, when it works with OS X.

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Answer 3

Oct 27, 2015 4:14 AM in response to ThorH

this is hilarious, seems like a malicious deprivation of functionality towards peeps that are sometimes forced to use windows on their macs.

oh well, thanks again apple!

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