Boot camp - Windows 7 Problems

I installed Windows 7 (64 bit) on my 13.3" Macbook Pro and have a few problems. Hopefully you guys have been able to fix it and can offer some advice.

1) Battery life sucks - 4 hours only....PCMAG (or was it CNET) reported getting approx 6-7 hours.
2) Keys are continuously illuminated even when I reduce it all the way down. Funny thing is if I keep a light over the iSight camera the keyboard illumination goes away.
3) The Macbook is not recognized as a laptop. For example, the screen is supposed to dim. That does not happen.

Thanks for your help. The main problem right now is #1, I was really hoping to get 6-7 hours in Windows as well as OS X. Even in OS X I am getting 6ish hours (I never really tested it just what I noticed when mousing over). Is there a utility that shows me info about my battery, specifically its health?

 

1)sometimes, these are misleading. you should be happy your getting 4hours from it. i get roughly 2.

2)this is an unresolved matter since bootcamp 2.1

3)what do you mean by it??my screen auto adjusts brightness on bootcamp 3.0


download battery care.

 

does your screen dim after a few minutes of inactivity?

 

unfortunately no...

 

I get about an hour when playing crysis on mine.... good gaming, but a bit short. Thats on Win 7 too.

 

Its funny. Windows 7 is supposed to do that for all laptops, its like our macbooks aren't being recognized as laptops...

 

Majority of these issues, such as the non-dimming display and the backlit keyboard, is due to Windows 7 not being able to control the Apple EFI properly. A firmware update or better Boot Camp drivers would fix this.

 

i believe it's at the firmware level as i've tried all sorts of drivers....normally, a 9600m gt driver would also detect the 9400m but that's not the case with our macs..

 

Windows 7 still uses BIOS to control Laptop ACPI.
That is why new laptops with EFI still uses Legacy BIOS emulation.
It is the Apple BIOS emulation that sucks.

 

Hi,

I have a 17" Macbook Pro Unibody. With Windows 7 x64, I have *full* functionality from all these parts being discussed.

- Keyboard illumination can be controlled with F5/F6, and auto-dims when I shine a light at the iSight

- Screen brightness can be controlled with F1/F2, from total screen off to full brightness.

- Screen (and keyboard) dims at idle time in conjunction with setting in Power Management

I haven't used it on battery. Yet.

 

what do you mean by the screen and keyboard dims at idle? mine(screen and keyboard) just shut down....

 

"Dim" meaning to 0% brightness.

 

that hppens on mine but one thing which happens on os x and not on windows is that the brightness descreases to one block before the display going to sleep.

 

i thought 64bit windows wasn't supported by bootcamp?

 

officially it isn't supported but i heard that 64 bit of w7 runs on bootcamp.

 

I run 64bit win7 in bootcamp and it runs fine.

 

Yeah after reading the thread, I installed Win7 x64 Pro and it works fine for the most part. Runs hotter it seems and has a shorter batterylife, the keyboard backlight doesn't work as well either.

 

Bootcamp does support Vista x64 so & shouldnt be a problem,

what is the build number of windows 7 which you are using????