Thursday 15 August 2013

Apple Keyboard and Windows 7 @ and " characters swapped over

Since putting bootcamp on Apple Macs we've always had a problem where the keys on the Keyboard in windows were never 'quite' right. Almost, but not. The most annoying one was the old @ key being swapped with " key.

Even after installing bootcamp drivers this problem persisted. It did turn quite interesting though:
I went into keyboard language setup and added "United Kingdom (Apple)", and deleted the bog standard "United Kingdom". After this, in some dialogue boxes the keyboard was behaving correctly (" and @ not swapped) and in everything else the @ and " keys were swapped around!

After trauling through google search results, I searched for Keyboard Regedit as I was sure something could be done here. After finding this article about changing keyboard regions I did the following steps:

  1. Opened Regedit
  2. went to  HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Keyboard Layout\Preload
  3. Took note of what was here
    1. there were two entries:
      1. 1.   a0000809
      2. 1.  00000809
  4. I next went to  HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Keyboard Layout\Preload
  5. Took a note what was here
    1. there was only one entry
      1. 1.  00000809
  6. I thus deduced that the Apple keyboard was a0000809 and the normal (incorrect) keyboard was 00000809
  7. I deleted the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Keyboard Layout\Preload\00000809 so there was only one entry here
  8. I edited the HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Keyboard Layout\Preload entry so it read:
    1. 1.  a0000809
  9. I rebooted and it all worked!!!!!
So, the problem was that Windows was using the Normal UK language layout for the keyboard, and when I added the Apple UK language layout it only used it at times because there was two entries for my login. But when the computer initially loads up the Apple version wasn't there. Now time for a cuppa.

Thursday 1 August 2013

Re-imaging Windows 7 on Apple Macs

So, we are now trialing a newer system for deploying Windows 7 on to our Apple Macs. Previously we've used Deploystudio, but as our Apple Server is too old, it is no longer up to the task.

For the rest of the PC's we use the Microsoft Imaging technique (whatever this is), and we're trying it with our macs.

Here's a step by step of what to do with the installer disk:

  1. insert disk
  2. set the default boot disk to be Windows (assuming Windows was previously installed)
  3. reboot and hold ALT
  4. select the CD
  5. Press ANY KEY
  6. log in with own credentials
  7. Select task sequence
    1. to determine which volume to boot from you need to run DISKPART. Type:
      1. SELECT DISK 0
      2. LIST VOLUMES
      3. SELECT VOLUME (type the volume number)
      4. LIST PARTITIONS
  8. Select to install BootCamp drivers
  9. Put name, domain details in
  10. Go!