Hi, How can I use a iSight Camera in a Windows VM? -- Sincerely, Patrick Mast, http://www.WinFakt.be http://www.xHarbour.com
I have been wondering the same thing. With all those updates, you woould think that they would have surport for the isight cam.
Parallels does not currently support USB 2 and I assume this is the same for firewire so until this is resolved you will not be able to use this device
Have you used Bootcamp to get the windows drivers for the iSight and tried installing them from there? USB 1.1 should be more than enough for the iSight. I used my external iSight with USB 1.1 on my G4 PowerBook for a couple of years with no issues.
The external iSight has always been a firewire device, there is no such thing as an external USB iSight... Under bootcamp however you *can* get the firewire iSight to work by downloading an unsupported driver for it.
Bolds added for emphasis. This will not work in Parallels. If you have a firewire version it should work under bootcamp with drivers that are built into XP, according to this post on another forum. EDIT: The other forum I linked to seems to be down. Here is the google cache of the page I linked to.
The MacBook Pro internal iSight is working very well in Windows XP under Bootcamp. You have only to install the Apple driver (supplied with Boocamp). It is working in MyComputer. You will see the drives and the camera. Once you click on the iSigth icon, Windows will display the image and you can even take a picture from Windows. iSight is also working in MSN Messenger 7.5 (and probably a lot of other software). Now to come back to Parallels, I have extracted the Apple iSight driver from Apple Bootcamp and installed it under Parallels Windows XP machine. When I turn the connection on, using the menu from the USB button in the bottom right corner of the Parallels screen, the iSight is recognized by XP. In the device manager, it is reported as working device. The only problem is for some obsure reason, it is automatically disconnected after 2 sec. and Windows is displaying the message as the USB device has been disconnected (and it will effectively disappear from Device Manager list). What is even more strange is after 2 more sec. Windows will report the camera has connected again. (and it will reappear in the Device Manager list). And this will switch on and off and on and off forever. (Parallels build 1922 and Mac OS X 10.4.8) Looking for Parallels to keep the iSigth camera connected! (now that the driver is available from Apple) Luca
Can you describe how you extracted it from Bootcamp please? If you have it in files you could post or email me then please do - to [email protected] Thanks Marvin
iSight driver extraction from Bootcamp. 1-Produce the driver cd from Bootcamp (or mount the disk image from inside the Bootcamp package, using display package content option under ctrl-click) 2-Under Windows XP (real PC, Bootcamp or Parallels), run the Apple "Install Macintosh Drivers for Windows XP.exe" as administrator using parameters: /a /V. Instead of installing it will extract. It will ask you where, and will create a "Macintosh Drivers for Windows XP" folder with folders for each driver inside it. Note: this is slow process. 3-Look for iSight folder, there are all driver files for the Internal USB iSight. Luca
Firewire is NOT support in Parallels so you will have to use the built-in iSight and it is workign for me fine on my MacBook Pro. Maybe after 3036 BETA they will fix it. MG
maynard, it seems like you had a working iSight in a previous build. In which programs did you use and test it ? What version was it ? Which type of mac (revision ?) are you using ? Usual procedure (e.g. extract the drivers and install) ? Thanks, Uezi
Don't do it! I tried using the bootcamp drivers. It didn't work. so then I used system restore to revert windows back to how it was before I installed the bootcamp drivers. This worked ok except that now my isight didn't work. I tried rebooting, that didn't work. in a panic I tried reinstalling my system. even that didn't work. So I was about to call tech support but then I found the answer on another forum. http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=833723&tstart=0 The apple support forum. duh *smack to the head* all I had to do was reset the SMC to do this on a macbook just shut off the computer remove the power plug and battery and hold down the power button for 5 sec. voila! I haven't tried booting windows again, I hope it behaves. but at least there's an easy albeit non-obvious fix. hopefully parallels will support isight soon
3150 still no external iSight Well I was very excited to see iSight support has been added in release 3150. Unfortunately this appears to only be the internal iSight on the iMac and MacBooks. Those of use with the Mac Mini (and I would assume the Mac Pro) are still out of luck with our firewire iSight cameras.
I just updated my Windows and the latest version of Skype was installed. Surprisingly, my FireWire iSight was recognized. They is in Parallels 10. i am unsure when support was added, but you can now use both internal and external iSight, and in this case a FireWire based external one!
