Virtualization, Cloud, Infrastructure and all that stuff in-between

I recently purchased a remote control for my MacBook Pro so that I could use it to control presentations without having to be at the keyboard, rather than opt for anything flashy I just assumed I could use the normal Apple Infra-red Remote Control, install the Bootcamp drivers to my Win7 VM and use it with PowerPoint, ah how wrong I was!

Even with the Bootcamp drivers installed Powerpoint does not recognize the IR remote as a “clicker” so after some head-scratching and a bit of Google-Fu I came up with the following solution;

Insert your OS X installation CD into your Windows VM (not the Mac, the DVD seems to be dual-format and has some partitions that only show up in a Windows host) you can do this via the virtual machine CD/DVD menu in Fusion as shown below

Install the BootCamp Drivers from the DVD (will require a reboot)

When it’s finished, run Apple Update to get the latest version (you’ll probably have an older version unless you have a brand-new Mac, reboot required)

Map the Apple IR receiver to your VM (screenshot shows it already connected here)

You will get some driver being installed mumbo-jumbo in Windows

Download and install the latest build of EventGhost

Download and extract the configuration file I have created here

Run EventGhost

Choose File/Open and locate the configuration file you downloaded.

I would also suggest setting it to run at logon via the file/Options menu

If you get an error about loading the HID plugin, then you may need to add it manually, right-click on HID: Apple Computers Inc IR Receiver and choose configure (you may have to remove/add it again as the file I exported may have device-specific IDs that don’t match yours exactly)

Now when you are in presenter mode in PowerPoint the left button will back-up one slide, the right and centre buttons will advance to the next slide.

the up/down buttons still map to the Mac volume control.

This is a pretty basic configuration, but it works reliably – it doesn’t seem to recognize the Menu button on my remote so I assume this is a limitation of the generic HID driver.