Enable iSight in Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion

Since 2005, Apple installed built-in iSight to different models of Mac. Nowadays, all Macbooks, Macbook Pros, Macbook Airs and iMacs will have built-in iSight; besides, the new 24 inch LED cinema display also includes built-in iSight so that Mac minis and Mac Pros users can enjoy the fun and practical use brought by the webcam.

With a great hardware built-in, if there is no software to support it, your Mac has nothing special. You can use your built-in webcam in iChat with the fun of Photo booth that come with Mac OS X 10.5, aka Leopard. Another popular program you can enjoy your webcam on Mac is Skype. However, the most popular instant messenger is still Microsoft Messenger which has very limited function with Macintosh version while the Windows version is more practical.

I have heard Microsoft will add audio and video conference function for the Mac version and I tried the beta version too; yet over more than a year, this big corporation still can’t finish this job or they tend to delay the process?

Many Mac users will install Windows in Boot Camp to enable iSight; for me, since I use Windows not very often, and I am not willing to stop what I am doing on Mac and reboot my machine to JUST use MSN. My other choice is running Windows XP in virtual software like Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion; but these virtual software don’t come with iSight drivers to let you use iSight within virtual Windows. In this post, I will show you how to do that step by step.

1. Of course you will need to install VMWare Fusion or Parallels Desktop with Windows; since this is not in this topic, I will skip the lengthy paragraph.
2. Download the drivers for iSight. >>>Click to Download<<<
3. Launch your Parallel Destop or VMware Fusion, unzip the file you just downloaded. Then choose “Devices”–>”USB”–>”Built-in iSight” from your menu bar:
4. When Windows asks you for the location of your driver, just point it the folder containing the iSight driver.
5. It’s quite straight forward. When the installation is done, you can turn on your MSN or Skype to test your iSight in VMWare Fusion or Parallels Desktop.

Hope this little tip is helpful to you.

[Update]: With new versions of Parallels Desktop and VMWare Fusion, you are no longer required to do this to enable iSight in virtual Windows OS.