How to install OS X 10.8.3 Windows 8 drivers on older Macs

After an extended amount of time, OS X 10.8.3 is finally out and adds support for Windows 8 drivers. However, many of the “older” Macs (like the MacBook Pro mid-2009 I am currently using it for work) are not supported, even though Windows 8 x64 runs just fine on it since the early previews of the OS.

If you go to Boot Camp Assistant on 10.8.3, it will tell you that it will only download Windows 7 drivers. You can also download Boot Camp 5.0 directly from Apple’s website, but when you run the setup.exe, it will tell you that your computer doesn’t support Windows 8 x64, which is silly since it is already running on it.

Here is a workaround on how to install the latest Boot Camp 5.0 Windows 8 drivers:

• Download Boot Camp Support Software (Windows 8 drivers) from Apple
• Extract the zip file
• Either open a command prompt (go to Start screen, type “cmd”, click on “Command Prompt”), go to the Apple folder inside the downloaded folder and run “msiexec /a BootCamp.msi” or use this method to enable “run as administrator” to right click of msi files, and right-click and click “run as administrator” for BootCamp.msi (you can download the .reg file here if you don’t want to do it yourself).
• Setup should run and start to install drivers now

I don’t take any responsibility for this. It worked for me, but ymmv. Mine got stuck on installing Realtek drivers at one point, I had to go to task manager and end task for the realtek installer (not the main setup), and after that it continued and finished successfully.

Please let me know if this worked for you, or if you did anything else to benefit others from your experience in the comments below.