I've been trying for a little while to get Apple's Boot Camp drivers fully installed in Windows Vista on my early-2011 MacBook Pro. The installer insists that it requires Windows 7 any time I try to run it, but I know that's a lie, as most of the drivers install and work fine on their own. There's one small exception, however: the touchpad doesn't seem to work properly. It functions, but left-clicking doesn't work, and neither does 2-finger scrolling.
I'm pretty sure it's not working because I'm not running it through the Boot Camp installer itself. Would it be possible to trick the installer into thinking I'm using Windows 7 somehow? Installing the kernel extension alone doesn't seem to be enough, unfortunately.
It may be worth tracking down the last version of BootCamp to support Vista and see if the included touchpad drivers work. You might be able to do it with this tool. I believe the 3.x series is the last to support Vista. I don't have full confirmation of this but I believe the Early 2009 to Late 2011 MBPs use the same touchpad so in theory, a driver from one of the plethora of BootCamp versions for those models should work.
Apple's BootCamp software is a mess. I don't know how helpful this is, but I know that running older versions of BootCamp on newer versions of Windows can be done easily using compatibility mode so I don't think the OS checker is that restrictive.
[WIP] Windows Vista Extended Kernel
in Windows Vista
Posted · Edited by cdnmlh
typo
It may be worth tracking down the last version of BootCamp to support Vista and see if the included touchpad drivers work. You might be able to do it with this tool. I believe the 3.x series is the last to support Vista. I don't have full confirmation of this but I believe the Early 2009 to Late 2011 MBPs use the same touchpad so in theory, a driver from one of the plethora of BootCamp versions for those models should work.
Apple's BootCamp software is a mess. I don't know how helpful this is, but I know that running older versions of BootCamp on newer versions of Windows can be done easily using compatibility mode so I don't think the OS checker is that restrictive.