Vermyndax / Boot Camp 5 is out with 10.8.3… but beware the Windows 8 Support

Created Fri, 15 Mar 2013 12:39:04 +0000 Modified Tue, 31 Dec 2024 18:25:52 +0000

I still have a 2008 Mac Pro (3,1) and it’s still running strong. I’ve invested a lot of money in keeping that thing running. I probably won’t do that again for a machine such as this, but for now I intend to keep it afloat for a few more years. Yeah, I know, it’s 5 years old already. Still, it’s a beast. 8 processors with 32gb of RAM and multi-terabytes of hard drive space can last me a little longer.

I was excited to learn that Apple intended to release official Windows 8 drivers for Boot Camp 5 with OS X 10.8.3. I had already installed Windows 8 on a separate partition and it runs pretty nicely. I had to manually add the NVidia video and Realtek audio drivers, but that solved just about every major noticeable issue. Aside from that, it would be nice to have to Boot Camp utility in the systray to boot to the other OS when I wanted and some official HFS+ read support on the Windows OS. I was excited.

10.8.3 dropped yesterday… finally. I hastily ran out to pick it up, install it and launch the Boot Camp utility to download Windows Support. The first irritant was the notice that it would no longer download to a folder of my choice. Now they enforce you to download the WindowsSupport files to a USB disk or MS-DOS FAT drive. Whatevs. I hooked up a USB disk. About midway through the download, it stopped and said, “Oh, hey, by the way… this Mac will only support Windows 7. You okay with that?”

Uhm. Hell no, I’m not okay with that.

I’m not sure if there actually is a component in this Mac that lacks a Windows 8 driver or Apple is just being lazy. I suspect it’s the latter, since a lot of these drivers are stock on Windows 8 or they download when you install the it anyway (one of the nicer new features of Windows 8 – the driver download stuff actually works).

Over on MacRumors I found a forum post that linked out to a support article. Looks like I’m “officially” SOL. However, there’s a way to download the Windows Support drivers without having to go through Boot Camp, which I just did. I’m going to see if I can force feed them to the Mac’s Windows 8 install. We’ll see how far I get. I would prefer to install the drivers individually and just install components that need the drivers. There aren’t many. Mainly, I just want that HFS+ and Boot Camp app support.

The Realtek and NVidia drivers are already out there. That’s why I suspect Apple is being lazy.

If you’re curious, check back later for the results.

UPDATE: It mostly works, but there is some driver in there that makes Windows 8 mad. It bombs with a KERNEL_SECURITY_CHECK_FAILURE. I suspect an “sfc /scannow” will fix that, but I will have to try that later.