If you’ve bought one of the recent iMacs, you’ve probably noticed that they now come with a bluetooth wireless keyboard and mouse. As convenient as this may be in the Mac OS, it causes huge headaches when installing Windows.

For starters, when you’re trying the Windows install, don’t be surprised if the keyboard/mouse aren’t working during the install. This is a bit of a problem because you’ve generally got to partition the drive during the install (amongst other things). I suggest you find a USB keyboard/mouse and use them for the install.

The issue that I had after the install and booted into Windows (and after I ran the BootCamp installer on the OSX install DVD through the USB stuff) was that the keyboard was detected, and the mouse wasn’t.

Great…

Turns out you can eventually get the mouse detected, but it’s a huge pain (especially if you’re relying on the keyboard to navigate). I got it working, but it took the following:

-Restart the computer.
-In “devices and printers” (start menu), select and remove the Apple Wireless Mouse.
-You can try adding the mouse with the “Add a device” option (power it off and on if it doesn’t show up), although it’ll probably hang.
-Restart the computer again.
-You can try adding the mouse again (Devices and Printers / Add a device). Again it with probably just hang, so cancel it.
-Navigate to the OS X install DVD again and have it run the BootCamp installer. Choose “Repair”.
-Let it restart once finished.
-Try adding the mouse again. Start/Devices_and_Printers/Add_a_device. Remember that if it doesn’t show, reset the mouse’s power again.

Your Apple Magic Mouse should hopefully be detected this time and work.

Update: This Magic Mouse continues to be a nightmare. Be prepared to remove & re-add the device upon each startup.