Install Mac OS X Snow Leopard on a PC using VMware

Posted on January 4, 2010 at 5:41 am

Many computer shoppers choose to buy a Mac not only to use OS X, but Windows as well. That is one strong advantage that Macs have in the Mac vs PC war. Apple computers are capable of running Windows, either through Bootcamp or virtual machines.

So, why aren’t Windows PC’s capable of running OS X? Well, Windows PC’s are capable of running OS X. But, it is against Apple’s licensing agreement to do so. Thus, this article is intended for educational and demonstration purposes only. If you want to run OS X the best way possible, get a Mac.

*In order for this to work, your computer must have a processor that supports virtualization. If it does not, you may receive errors. For the most part, any newer processor lines: Core 2 Duo, Quad Core, and Core i7 should all work fine.

But, don’t expect to not get errors if you are using an older Pentium 4 machine. The processor must be Intel and not AMD*

Because we will be installing OS X on top of Windows through a virtual machine, the first step is to get some virtual machine software. For this demo, we will be using VMware’s Workstation 7.

If you do not feel like purchasing Workstation 7 at this time, you can get a limited trial here. The download may take a good half an hour to complete. Workstation is a 512MB file.

Upon download, go ahead and install Workstation 7 onto your computer. The installation process is very simple just launch the installer, and the VMware installer will guide you through the rest.

One thing to note, when it asks your if you want to do a custom install or a typical install, choose typical install. After the installer finishes, restart your computer.

Now that you have Workstation 7 installed, you need a pre-configured VMware virtual machine file to install Snow Leopard on top of. Download this file (alt download) and save it to your desktop.

After you have the pre-configured virtual machine file downloaded, you will need to extract the files using WinRAR or another archive utility. If you do not have an archive utility, you can get WinRAR here.

Note: This file is just a disk image framework, no viruses or anything like that. VMware Workstation uses the disk image format to save and contain virtual machines.

Time to start installing Snow Leopard. Launch VMware Workstation by using the path Start > All Programs > VMware > VMware Workstation. Open up the VMware disk image framework that you just downloaded and extracted.

Select File > Open. Navigate to your Snowy_VM folder, open it, open up the next folder that says “Mac OS X 10.6 Server (experimental).vmwarevm, and choose the 2KB file that is named Mac OS X Server 10.6 (experimental). Click the open button to load the virtual machine.

From the Mac OS X Server tab in the VMware Workstation window, click the edit virtual machine settings icon. You may adjust the hard drive size, memory, etc, to your liking.

Select CD/DVD (IDE) and under the Connection settings, select Use ISO Image File. Click the Browse button and navigate to the Darwin_Snow.iso which is located in your Snowy_VM folder. Click the Open button to select the virtual machine.

Now it’s time to power on the virtual machine. Click the Power on this virtual machine option. As soon as the process starts, hold down the F8 key on your keyboard. You should be prompted with a boot menu screen.

If you have not done so already, insert your OS X Snow Leopard Install DVD into your computer’s CD/DVD drive. So far, you have loaded a workable virtual machine and framework into VMware Workstation.

Now it’s time to actually install Snow Leopard onto that virtual machine disk image. You should see some settings icons located at the bottom right portion of the VMware window. Right-click the icon that looks like a CD and choose settings from the pop up menu.

Under the connections listing, change the options from use ISO image to use physical drive. After you have done that, click the Save and Exit button.

Go back into the boot screen and select the option C Boot from DVD. Press the F8 button on your keyboard for advanced options and type “-v” without the quotes and hit enter. Now, VMware Workstation should boot your Snow Leopard install disc. It may take a couple of minutes to load.

That’s all there is to it. You should now be at the normal Snow Leopard install screen. Click continue on the first screen that comes up. On the second screen, click the utilities option in the install window and select disk utility. Use disk utility to change the hard drive format type to OS X Extended (Journaled). Exit disk utility and let OS X install completely.

Upon install of Snow Leopard, your virtual machine will restart. After it restarts you will need to do a couple of things to get into Snow Leopard. Select CD/DVD options, like you did before, and use the Use ISO Image File option.

snow leopard bootup

Browse to the Darwin_Snow.iso and select it. Now, upon powering on your virtual machine, it should boot directly into Snow Leopard. You may need to force a couple of restarts until Snow Leopard loads correctly for the first time. After it does, adjust your settings from within Snow Leopard, save, and you should be good to go.

» Filed Under Mac OS X

Comments

118 Responses to “Install Mac OS X Snow Leopard on a PC using VMware”

Cipher said on : January 7th, 2010 at 3:09 pm

Thanks for the tutorial. Had a question though. Is there a legal way to get that virtual machine with Snow Leopard on it?

What if I have a Mac and I have a Snow Leopard CD? Can I just use that to install it into VMWare? Thanks!

batDan said on : January 8th, 2010 at 10:09 am

Hm, will this also work on a PC having Linux (and not Windows) installed?

Would it also work with VMware Player? That one is free for privte use!

seb said on : January 8th, 2010 at 12:17 pm

How fast is this? OK to test some stuff?

Stefan Popp said on : January 9th, 2010 at 3:01 am

Thanks for this tutorial!

Cipher, i guess it isnt legal. I got a MacBook Pro too, and with VmWare Fusion you only can install OSX Server. So i guess that Apple forces VMWare to only support SL-Server.

There are some workarounds in the internet to get normal SL to work, but Apple himself denied VMWare to bring legal support for SL to other plattforms except Apple Hardware.

Best regards,
Stefan

Marco said on : January 9th, 2010 at 4:58 am

Nice work. But there are some problems I need to fix.

First, i have only have one resolution to select (1024×768). OS X displays no other resolution. How to get higher res?

Second, while shutting down sometimes the system permanently crashes and i have to hard-power-off the VM. Need still a solution for this problem too.

Thanks

twacker said on : January 9th, 2010 at 6:12 am

Just tried it following the description to the letter. For some reason, after selecting physical drive, returing to the boot menu and pressing c, it tells me ‘please insert a CD’. My Snow Leopard DVD is definitely in the drive tho.

Any ideas?

twacker said on : January 9th, 2010 at 6:39 am

Actually manged to get it running, forgot to select connect to drive D:.

Quick question, after the installation is complete and all, will I have to use the darwin image file every time too boot Snow Leopard?

Ant said on : January 10th, 2010 at 7:17 am

Excellent! Followed the your well detailed instructions and its running perfectly on my Vista 64 installation. Two issues tho’ – not able to access my creative audigy sound card with Snow leopard and cannot increase the screen size to anything apart from one 1024×768 display, despite having dual 1600×1080 monitors. Have tinkered with all the hardware and VM settings prior to starting Snow Leopard, and then in system preferences once running. Any suggestions? (get a mac…etc etc ) Thanks again.

sneakinhysteria said on : January 10th, 2010 at 4:20 pm

Best fix for display resolution is to get the darwin.iso containing the Mac VMWare tools from a VMWare Fusion installation off a MAc (it’s under Library/ApplicationSupport/Images.

This will make the virtualized Mac OS to adapt to the host settings and will also auto-resize.

Also, install the sound drivers included in the file linked above and you get audio.

Only remaining issue for me is a kernel panic each time I try to shutdown. Any ideas?

freakX said on : January 11th, 2010 at 7:08 am

Is there a way to change the resolution? Are there working VMWare tools for OSX?

Thanks!

josh said on : January 12th, 2010 at 8:42 pm

what if you download leopard to your pc, is there anyway to continue the install? or do you have to have it on a dvd…i can’t burn it to a reg dvd because the file is over 7gb..so i would need to get one of those bigger cd’s, whatever they are called…anyways thanks for the help

twacker said on : January 13th, 2010 at 12:09 pm

@ josh:

Are you serious? Where di you download that copy of Snow Leopard? This isn’t the place to get advice on how to run pirated software!

Justin said on : January 13th, 2010 at 5:17 pm

I get to the step, after selecting the Darwin iso, to power on the machine and rather I press or hold F8 (or dont even touch F8 at all), I get an error that Mac OSX doesnt support software virtuallization and that I need to find a different host for vmware workstation to install Mac OSX to. Any ideas? I’m lost!

twacker said on : January 14th, 2010 at 5:09 am

Ok, I made it past the Boot menu screen to select c and then F8–> -v, but during the loading process all I get are ‘EBIOS Read error: Device timout’ again and again, until it all blows up in a kernel panic and the CPU being disabled by the VM. This is in Win7 x64 Pro.

Any ideas?

cauacho said on : January 15th, 2010 at 11:19 am

Does it work with a copy of Leopard or only with snow leopard…

twacker said on : January 16th, 2010 at 7:35 am

Afaik only w/ SL, due to the provided Darwin.iso

Morph3us said on : January 17th, 2010 at 1:35 pm

For those that are trying to install Snow Leopard using “dmg” image, you have to convert it to iso, bin, … (UltraISO) And after succesfull convertation you than have to mount it (VirtualClone).

franky said on : January 18th, 2010 at 5:41 pm

I am using win 7 and this way works perfectly fine… i tried so many different ways, but this way was try once and DONE! i think it is the best and easiest way to install Snow Leopard on a PC… just have 1 issue. i dont have any sound. if anybody knows how to install the sound help me pls. thanks

marlim said on : January 19th, 2010 at 1:29 pm

crash on power off: edit vmx from “smc.present = true” to “smc.present = false”

Tom said on : January 21st, 2010 at 2:53 pm

Hey, I’ve followed all the instructions here, but when I power on the machine, I end up getting this error below:

“Mac OS X is not supported with software virtualization. To run Mac OS X you need a host on which VMware Workstation supports hardware virtualization.”

Manish said on : January 22nd, 2010 at 6:50 am

Hello, this sounds like an excellent way to install Snow Leopard on Windows, but when I reboot I am getting a message about disabling the CPU. Any ideas?

Mosi said on : January 23rd, 2010 at 2:58 pm

Change Graphics Mode: Needs to be changed during startup, hit F8 (maybe you have to then pick Harddrive “H” and quickly hit F8 again):

Then type the following:
“Graphics Mode”=”1280×1024x32″

Hit Enter/Return to boot.

Change the x/y/depth for a mode suitable for you.

Ant said on : January 26th, 2010 at 12:22 pm

Running vmware workstation on vista64 with Intel quad Q6600 and 8Gig ram, Asus P5K MB. Installed Snow Leopard perfectly as detailed above using purchased snow leopard os disk. Boots first time every time as a VM but no sound, and screen locked to 1024×768. As a noob the best solution I found was to power up the Snow Leopard installation then use Safari to re-download the Snowy_Vmware_files.tbz2 file mentioned in the installation instructions. Open (click click)the file in Finder which then unarchives it into a Snowy_VM folder. Inside that, the darwin_snow.iso can be deftly mounted with a right click >>open>>disc image mounter (i’m new to hacks)which then prompts to install VMware tools. The SL screen res is fully adjustable after that. Back to the snowy_vm folder where one can unarchive EnsoniqAudioPCI.mpkg.tar.gz with another swift clickclick and then rclick>> open with >> installer which prompts the sound driver installation. And presto! Perfect sound via my soundblaster audigy, and 1680×1050 res. A convoluted but effective method. A BIG thank you to all you boffs out there for making this possible. Seriously.

snow leopard said on : January 26th, 2010 at 12:42 pm

Ant is right. Once you install VMware tools within OS X, Sound and Display should be perfect.

Marco said on : January 26th, 2010 at 3:53 pm

nothing ist perfect! The Sounddrivers are definitely beta status. Try using Garage band and you will know what i mean!

Kevin said on : January 28th, 2010 at 5:32 am

Je n arrive pas a installer avec vmware, pourtant je suis bien tout a la lettre, mais une fois que je fais booter le cd apres l installation se lance et sa me met tout en bas disabling CPU 66000000 Hz

Jesse said on : January 28th, 2010 at 5:34 pm

I need some help.. I’ve followed well, the instructions perfectly, but whenever I power it on, I get: “Mac OS X is not supported with software virtualization. To run Mac OS X you need a host on which VMware Workstation supports hardware virtualization.”

Richard said on : January 29th, 2010 at 3:11 pm

I also got the “Mac OS X is not supported with software virtualization. To run Mac OS X you need a host on which VMware Workstation supports hardware virtualization.”

To get past this, I needed to reboot the host PC and edit your BIOS settings (usually pressing F8 will open the BIOS setup before Windows boots).
I needed to ‘Enable’ virtualization in processor/hardware options.

Unfortunately, during my MacOSX installation I get a kernel panic around 19 minutes remaining mark everytime.
Any suggestions…

Bob said on : January 31st, 2010 at 8:29 pm

I too get the error “Mac OS X is not supported with software virtualization. To run Mac OS X you need a host on which VMware Workstation supports hardware virtualization.”

I changed the BIOS settings to enable virtualization. I rebooted, reinstalled VMware 7, but I still get the “Mac OS X is not supported…” error message.

Somebody please help. I’ve been searching forums for days for a fix.

twacker said on : February 2nd, 2010 at 11:23 am

Bob, what CPU are you running? Are you sure it’s capable of virtualization?

twacker said on : February 2nd, 2010 at 12:02 pm

Using the file supplied in the instructions within SL worked perfectly, now have working sound and proper res. One last gripe is the lack of hardware based graphics acceleration. I know this shouldn’t be technically possible within a VM, but any existing workarounds?

Jesse said on : February 2nd, 2010 at 3:04 pm

According to CPUID CPU-Z, I have an Intel Pentium 4 530 Prescott 3.00ghz. It’s hyper threaded, but I don’t think that matters. Will it work?

twacker said on : February 2nd, 2010 at 4:28 pm

@ Jesse:

Unfortunately not. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I.....el_VT-x.29

Any processor not listed there won’t be able to supply virtualization.

Daz said on : February 4th, 2010 at 7:35 pm

Great instructions – worked perfectly. One issue I’m having is with iWork 09. No text dispays when you enter it in but when you do a print preview it’s visible. I’m running this on a Dell E6400 with NVidia Quadro graphics (Win7 with latest NVidia drivers). VMWare tools are installed. I’m thinking it is more than likely a graphics issue but don’t have any ideas on what I can possibly do to fix this. Thoughts?

Jesse said on : February 5th, 2010 at 3:15 pm

@ twacker:

In that one column, or through out the whole page? :S
Sorry, I’m just a bit confused..

twacker said on : February 5th, 2010 at 3:20 pm

@Jesse:

the Bit where it says virtualization. I checked tho, your CPU definitely wont work, sorry.

Jesse said on : February 5th, 2010 at 5:31 pm

@ twacker:

Okay, thanks a bunch! ^^
Guess I’m gonna need a new CPU!

Crunch said on : February 7th, 2010 at 10:28 pm

I’m THIS [] close to booting into Snow Leopard (10.6.2)!

When I start the Virtual Machine, it says “Darwin/x86 loading…”, and then I get the error message “Invalid front side bus frequency 66000000 Hz” CPU is being disabled

WTF!?!?!? The FSB?? Never heard of that error.

I have a T9900 (Core 2 Duo 3.06GHz 6MB L2; x64 CPU); Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit running VMWare 7; should I enable VT-d by the way? On top of Virtulization? I get this error either way.. Pls HELP!!!!

leo said on : February 8th, 2010 at 5:39 pm

Hi i would like to know if i can manage to recognize by the os my ati radeon 4870 or it is virtualized only. i find video slows on my quad core intel and 2 gb ram….is it possible to get it faster?

Franc said on : February 9th, 2010 at 2:46 pm

I’m sorry, but this is not working for me. I am unable to install OS X in a virtual machine.

Franx said on : February 9th, 2010 at 4:01 pm

Hi Crunch, had the same error and didn´t get rid of it until i installed and used VMware Player (free app from VMWare) instead of VMware Workstation. Remember to enable VT in BIOS AND remember to shut down your PC and remove powercord (+battery if laptop) and restart after you do your BIOS-setting. Then you should be home free…! I’m posting this message from Safari in my virtual OS X Snow Leopard… Smooth…

Crunch said on : February 10th, 2010 at 2:49 am

Thanks Franx! Actually, I figured it out, and I am adding this message from within OS X 10.6.2 as well.

Turned out to be VMWare Workstation 7.01 works with OS X, but not 7.0. At least I THINK that’s what it is. As for VM Player, I have yet to try that. Hmm…wow, so a free program works better than the paid one? lol…

I also used a different revision of OS X 10.6.2, so the problem that I had experienced may have been due to that, as opposed to VMWare.

I’m loving it, though! Super duper F-A-S-T! FULL WUXGA (1920×1200) resolution, Internet is fast, 32-bit color, and the only thing is that I have yet to get audio to work. I have a special driver, though, so I’m going to try that right now.

Thanks again for the advice nonetheless! I have the T9900 CPU, which is a Core 2 Duo 3.06GHz, 6MB L2, and it not only supports Virtulization, but the VT-d feature as well! I’m going to play around with that.

Which forum do you recommend, Franx, and everyone else? We gotta trade ideas and experiences.

Kelvin said on : February 10th, 2010 at 11:57 am

The installation works great and I am able to install the iPhone SDK 3.1.3.

However, I can start the VM with the snapshot that I created BUT I can’t boot up the VM from scratch. It just show a grey screen with apple at the middle and it is trying to load but without success (the mouse cursor just keep cycle and cycle)

Also, make sure you set the Screen Driver of your OS X, as I was trying to update the OS to 10.6.2. Then away from my desk. When I came back, it tells me the Random Screen Driver is not supported and does not allow me to go back to the VM.

From that time on, I am not able to boot up my VM. Not too sure whether it is caused by the upgrading to 10.6.2 OR because I took a snapshot OR it is how VM behave in general.

I have installed Leopard 10.5.5 VM image before, I can also only start up the VM from the snapshot, I can’t boot up by VM from scratch.

Crunch, did you upgrade the 10.6.2 from 10.6 by the software upgrade? Can you reboot your VM? Does it hang?

Thanks.

Crunch said on : February 11th, 2010 at 5:38 am

Hey Kelvin, I never had 10.6. I briefly messed around with 10.5.8, but subsequently went straight to 10.6.2. Yes, I’m able boot, reboot, and shut down the VM without any hiccups. One time I let it go into sleep mode which caused it to hang, but that’s to be expected I guess and also easily fixed.

I still don’t have any sound, but since my last post, I haven’t had a chance to play with the audio driver that I have. (EnsoniqAudoPCI)

I have iWork and MS Office for Mac 2008 in .dmg format. Does anyone have any advice as to what the best way is to install software suites and drivers on a virtualized OS like Snow Leopard? I read somewhere that they have to be mounted on VMWare. I don’t really use optical drives. I much prefer an additional hard drive or SSD instead. Always have.

Thanks!

Mukz said on : February 12th, 2010 at 12:26 pm

Hi, I ran through the entire thing but when the actual installer loads, I select the language and the next screen after it says “loading please wait” (or similar) It says that mac os cant be installed on the system, and the 2 options i get are restart and backup from time thingy. Once i hit retart it loads and says No operating system installed. Any help on this? cheers

Texanraj said on : February 13th, 2010 at 12:15 pm

Barvo! Works perfectly with VMware workstation 7.0 and 7.01. Installed just fine. My only gripe is the sound does’nt work on my Dell E4300. The sound drives from Snowy VM folder fails when I try to install. Can someone help me out on what I need to do with regards to my sound drivers? Thanks a lot for all the guidance here.

Crunch said on : February 14th, 2010 at 4:41 am

@Texanraj: I just got sound to work on my Thinkpad today. You need to install the EnsoniqAudioPCI audio driver package to make it work. I had to turn up the sound on my laptop quite a bit, and both the microphone for audio in works fine now, and for any playback of audio/video content, my speakers and my earpiece all work great. If you need the audio driver set, please let me know, and I’ll help you out.

I also figured out to install apps from both .dmg image files as well as applications that you download from within Snow Leopard. iLife ‘09 consist of iPhoto, iDVD, iWeb, GarageBand, and several others, all of which installed without any problems. After rebooting OS X, each application had new versions or patches released for them, and they also downloaded and installed very fast. I’m very impressed with how smoothly this all works.

VMWare needs to be configured to “use host system’s sound on connection”, and you have to set up a share for the Mac applications that you have. In my case, I put them all in one folder, set up the share using VMWare’s Sharing Wizard, browse to the folder and finally, make sure the path of the share is correct. That part is pretty straightforward.

@Mukz: The initial installation can be a pain. Maybe we can make you a pre-configured virtual machine that you can just turn on and configure to your liking after that. Maybe someone else has any additional input for Mukz…? I never ran into the problems you stated.

As for the “No OS installed” error on rebooting the guest OS, that’s not that uncommon. The workaround is to Shut down the VM, and restart it. For all intents and purposes, Mac OS X will see that as a clean reboot.

Until next time… Take it easy, guys!

Xtrem said on : February 15th, 2010 at 12:49 am

I have i7-920 with Virtualization enabled in bios. During install, it kernel panics every time at around 18 mins. Any suggestions?

Omer said on : February 16th, 2010 at 4:07 am

Hey I have the same problem of virtualization. I even checked my BIOS but it doesnt have any Virtualization option in it. What should I do know?? Please help me…I am stuck.

One more question I would like to ask is, I even tried installing it directly by bootng my PC. Everything was perfect, installation too suceeded. But when it loads back it show me a problem “You need to restart your PC. You need to hold your power buttin and press it again to switch on”.
I am very confused what this problem is?? Help me

Texanraj said on : February 16th, 2010 at 2:58 pm

I configured my VMware 7.0 workstation with “use host system’s sound on connection” and rebooted and tried installing just the EnsoniqAudioPCI audio driver package and it still fails. Everthing else runs like a champ. Not sure why the audio driver is consistenly failing. Tried several times with and without reboots. Appreciate any help.

twacker said on : February 17th, 2010 at 4:42 pm

@Omer:

What version of SL are you using? If you were able to install it from scratch it sounds as though you have a version hacked for Windows. I have no idea how to help you with that.

If you can’t find an option for Virtualization in your BIOS you probably wont have a CPU capable to run a VM. What CPU do you have?

Omer said on : February 18th, 2010 at 1:04 pm

@twacker
thankz for ur comment.
I have core 2 du 2.8ghz and gigabyte intel chipset G31/33 motherboard, nvidia graphics 7300 and 2 gb ram.
I think this requirement is quite enough to run mac on my pc. but still…unlucky
Hey tracker..one more thing…do i need virtualization technology to run mac or to run VM…if i directly install mac on my pc by booting option, will it be done.

also i tried dat once but it give me problem “You need to restart your pc. You need to hold on the power button and press dat button again”(sumwhat like this).

hey tracker i m really thankful to u dat u replied me back.
expecting another reply soon.

twacker said on : February 18th, 2010 at 1:11 pm

@Omer:
Performance wise you should be fine running SL, but in order to install SL on a PC you need a version that has been modified for that. I have never used one personally, and as it is illegal, I don’t fell comfortable posting about it here. But as always, GIYF.

To run a VM your CPU needs to be able to run a virtualized environment. To find the model number of your CPU, click ‘Start’ then ‘run’ and type in ‘dxdiag’. Under the listing ‘Processor’ it will tell you the model number of your CPU.
Compare that to this list http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I.....el_VT-x.29 and if your CPU is on there, you should be able to run a VM.

For that to happen, the VT extension needs to be enabled via the BIOS of your mobo tho, so if it doesn’t list an option for that, I wouldn’t know how to proceed either. Quick tip tho: Gigabyte mobos sometimes hide advanced settings, which you can unlock by pressing CTRL+F1 when in the BIOS.

Let me know how it went, hope I could help.

baxter said on : February 19th, 2010 at 6:24 am

Hi,

I used this description under Win7 Pro and a Laptop with P8700 Dual 2 Core

I include “SnowOSX3.6.iso” and I see the “cosmic backround” an the colored weel… thats all… I wait one hour…

Bird said on : March 1st, 2010 at 6:34 am

Excellent tutoriel, je l’ai suivi à la lettre et tout a marché correctement, mais après avoir eu le bureau Léopard sous les yeux, impossible maintenant de relancer… j’ai la pomme sur fond gris, et un chargement perpetuel…
Il faudrait songer aussi à bien traduire ce tutoriel car le passage de l’anglais au français, ressemble beaucoup à du google traduction….

Bird said on : March 1st, 2010 at 6:49 am

It worked one time only and now, The loading system screen with the apple is always present and nothing all…. Too bad…

Denesh said on : March 6th, 2010 at 6:13 am

You can try similar method with Mac OS X VMware image in VMware workstation here,

sysprobs.com/mac-windows-featured-post

also with VMware Player

sysprobs.com/run-mac-os-pc-free-easy-vmware-player-3

noname_palm said on : March 8th, 2010 at 8:14 am

Everything works excellent, but when i install iworks 09 i have the same problem as daz. No text is displayed. Has anybody a solution for this problem ?
Help !!

Troy said on : March 9th, 2010 at 2:37 pm

This article worked great for me. Thanks Ant for telling us how to fix the sound and screen resolution. Now does anyone know how to get my built in webcam to work? SL doesn’t see it. I have an hp hdx 18t.

Wal-PK said on : March 13th, 2010 at 10:20 am

Ive got this too but my bad bcz my processor did not support virtulization.

“Mac OS X is not supported with software virtualization. To run Mac OS X you need a host on which VMware Workstation supports hardware virtualization.”

Nigel said on : March 15th, 2010 at 10:05 am

Having just spent the whole weekend looking at various websites, blogs etc etc I have finally found a way of running OSX SL on my PC. Works a treat generally. It was great after so much time spent to get the thing running. Thank you, you have made my day. The only downside is not being able to access the usb ports on my PC. I was hoping to use disk utiltiy and make use of a usb drive. Do you have any ideas?

Vasilii said on : March 15th, 2010 at 11:25 am

Is it possible to post pre-configured VMware virtual machine file with HD set as single file (not 2GB parts)?

Thanks
V.

ph said on : March 21st, 2010 at 1:27 am

When I start the Virtual Machine, it says “Darwin/x86 loading…”, and then I get the error message “Invalid front side bus frequency 66000000 Hz”
CPU is being disabled …
I have cpu Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E7400

Stav said on : March 21st, 2010 at 4:26 am

Hey everyone. I encountered several problems while trying to install on vmware 7, including the “system shutdown sequence” and the infinite apple logo problem.

Eventually, adding these lines to the .vmx file helped:
monitor.virtual_exec = “automatic”
monitor.virtual_mmu = “automatic”

Also, I changed the smc.present property to FALSE

good luck!

Crunch said on : March 21st, 2010 at 11:53 pm

@everyone who has the front side bus frequency problem, before trying anything else, upgrade to VMWare Workstation 7.01! I initially tried 7.0 and had a few issues, including the FSB problem, but 7.0.1 fixed it for me. Just try it, and post back here. If you still have a problem, I’ll have a few other tricks up my sleeve. Also try the latest version of VMPlayer, which is a free download.

@those who are wondering if they have Intel Virtulization. Any Core 2 Duo T/E/X/QX/P series have virtulization. However, it is *disabled* in the BIOS by default, so all you have to do is enable it. I’ve seen a lot of people give up when they find out that they have the correct CPU but it still doesn’t work. It does have to be enabled!

Fernando said on : March 22nd, 2010 at 8:34 am

Os novos Turions II já possuem virtualização. Não funciona instalar o Mac com eles?

English:

The new Turion II already supports virtualization. Does Mac OS X work with it?

@Fernando said on : March 23rd, 2010 at 1:03 pm

I’m going to have to say yes on that. If it says it supports virtualization, it should support VMware Player or Workstation. But remember, this article only promotes compatibility with Intel processors. Turion is AMD.

Ani said on : March 29th, 2010 at 3:56 am

I am using vmplayer 3 and that too on intel i3m processor,that has vtx technology..i edited the virtual pc and set the cd rom options to the boot loader;but,after darwin x86 loads, the grey apple logo arrives and the virtual machine restarts itself,returning to NO OS found screen..

I tried in vmware workstation,but in it i get an error stating virtual cpu shutdown..

Please help me!!!

sean said on : March 31st, 2010 at 4:18 pm

hello every time i try to power on the virtual machine im asked for a valid serial number and i do not want to purchase the software. what do i do?

Anbu said on : April 5th, 2010 at 7:26 am

Hi…. i have downloaded a copy of snow leopard osx from torrent… it has an ISO file with size 10 mb and a DMG file with size 4 GB…. im using windows 7 os… i want to install mac in my acer laptop… can u say me how to write this image file to DVD or a pendrive and boot it… pls explain me with clear instructions….

cesar said on : April 5th, 2010 at 1:06 pm

Tried starting with virtualization, but keep getting the following error message:

Mac OS X is not supported with software virtualization. To run Mac OS X you need a host on which VMware Workstation supports hardware virtualization.

Tell me how to fix this, thanks.

@Cesar said on : April 6th, 2010 at 7:01 am

Hello,

to use this tutorial, you need an intel processor that supports virtualization. You may need to enable virtualization in the BIOS. check out this post.

http://helpdeskgeek.com/how-to.....-the-bios/

Krish said on : April 9th, 2010 at 12:34 pm

AFAIK the 64bit flash would be required if one were running a 64bit browser, which currently is not available. so a flash 32 bit on a browser 32 bit runs perfectly fine on a 64 bit OS. so i dont see how the problem you have mentioned applies.

War Wolf said on : April 11th, 2010 at 10:54 pm

This is good, I followed to the letter and all is well. Nice job.

Crunch said on : April 12th, 2010 at 8:04 pm

I just installed the brand new OS X 10.6.3 (build 10D753). The 400MB update that appears when you click “Software Update” did not work for me, but the Combo update (700+MB .dmg file) did the trick. The latter is what Apple advises to use anyway, as every file gets overwritten, as opposed to only those that changed since 10.6.2. It is considered a “fresh install”. I downloaded the 10.6.3 upgrade file directly from Apple’s support site from within my virtual machine, by the way.

I used VMware Workstation 7.01, but then replaced it with VMPlayer 3.0.1 which had no problem letting me install and later upgrade iLife and iWork.

So if you’re wondering if it’ll work but you don’t want to risk your OS X VM, there’s your answer. Go for it!

Crunch said on : April 13th, 2010 at 12:37 am

Re my own post #75: Actually, the build number is 10D573, *not* xxx753. Mixed the numbers up.

Also! Apple JUST posted Mac OS X 10.6.3 Combined update “v1.1″ today, April 12, literally as I was posting the aforementioned entry (#75). After researching it a bit, I have come upon the reason for this “2nd release”, for lack of a better term, of OS X 10.6.3. However, this applies only to certain models (actual Mac’s ), and after I did another System Software check, it did not come up, i.e. it isn’t necessary for the purpose of running the OS in a virtualized environment.

Happy updating!

Daniel said on : April 18th, 2010 at 10:30 am

hallo ich mache alles so wie es beschrieben wird aber ich bekomme immer diese meldung Mac OS X is not supported with software virtualization. To run Mac OS X you need a host on which VMware Workstation supports hardware virtualization. können sie mir helfen
mfg

uni said on : April 19th, 2010 at 3:10 am

I develop on a PC but my designer works on a mac. He works off site and he’s been having problems with some stuff I’ve uploaded. I was hoping there was a way I could run a snow leopard “lite” version on vMware for testing.

any ideas. or is there an mac emulator available for Win XP.

thanks.

Thomas said on : April 21st, 2010 at 12:16 pm

Je kunt een DVD kopen en deze gebruiken, voor je geweten:p

R.Miora said on : April 21st, 2010 at 11:34 pm

Hi,

I see this tutorial is for a PC owner, but is it for 32-bit or 64-bit version of Windows?

@R.Miora said on : April 22nd, 2010 at 11:19 pm

It should work with both. You PC needs to be able to run VMware Player or Workstation, and you must have a CPU with virtualization capabilities

uni said on : April 23rd, 2010 at 12:26 am

i’m having problems with the virtualization. I don’t think my machine has the virtualization capabilities as I went into the BIOS settings and didnt’ see anything.

thanks for all the help and comments all.

Frank said on : April 23rd, 2010 at 3:10 am

Thanks for this tutorial, it works great! However, as soon as Darwin gets loaded it disconnects my CD/DVD drive. If I don’t connect it immediately by hand it just hangs. Is there a way around this?

ravi said on : April 23rd, 2010 at 8:19 pm

HI i installed vmware and i inserted my friends mac 10.6.3 dvd and tried to run in vmware. after that it is showing “OPERATING SYSTEM NOT FOUND”

ravi said on : April 23rd, 2010 at 8:57 pm

I got Apple logo after inserting mac os x dvd.. 1st screen asked for selecting language and then i got ” MAC OS X CAN’T BE INSTALLED ON THIS COMPUTER”

if you want to restore your system from a time machine backup, click “restore from back up “

Zay yar said on : April 27th, 2010 at 2:07 am

Hey guys,

I just followed the instructions and installed successfully on an HP Envy 15. Everything works great. Installing iPhone SDK now. The only time I had trouble was during the first few attempts where i was not using a correct SL RETAIL DISC.

Once I got the retail DISC, installation went smooth with just one try.

Updated to OS 10.6.3 and installed vmware tools and got the correct resolution.

Thanks a lot for the instructions. Appreciate it.

Simon said on : May 2nd, 2010 at 11:09 am

Bonjour
Quand je lance l’image virtuelle via darwin_snow.iso. J’ai l’erreur suivante : ” Mac OS X is not supported with software virtualization. To run Mac OS X you need a host on which VMware Workstation supports hardware virtualization.”
Quelqu’un aurai une solution pour moi ?

Merci d’avance

Dinesh said on : May 9th, 2010 at 2:28 am

If anyone wants to increase the screen resolution with wide screen monitor support, check this post. It worked well with VMware Workstation and player.

sysprobs.com/increase-screen-resolution-wide-screen-support-mac-os-virtual-machine-vmware-player-workstation

fede said on : May 14th, 2010 at 8:35 am

@crunch. I am having the “invalid front-side bus frequency 66000000 hz” problem. I tried it in VMWare Workstation 7.0.1 and VMWare player 3.0.1 and the problem persists.

I also used to have the problem ‏”Mac OS X is not supported with software virtualization. To run Mac OS X you need a host on which VMware Workstation supports hardware virtualization” but I solved it editing the VM configuration changing the guest operating system to FreeBSD. However I cannot get past the other problem.

Any clue?

Thanks

Olivier said on : May 20th, 2010 at 1:05 pm

Hi, is this tutorial compatible with an AMD processor? Thanks.

Rodrigo said on : May 23rd, 2010 at 12:02 pm

Não tem nenhum jeito de instalar sem ter processador que suporte virtualização???

Chris said on : May 26th, 2010 at 12:32 pm

I Have just installed VMWARE Workstation 7 and used Snow Leapord and installed fine. I’m running Win 7 64bit, AMD Phenom II X4 945 3.01Ghz, 8GIG DDR2. It’s very responsive too. Even in full screen…. Just need to get sound working. Looking good.

Caros said on : May 26th, 2010 at 2:22 pm

Une fois snow leopard installé, peut-on (au démarage) choisir d’utiliser windows ou apple?

TC said on : May 29th, 2010 at 5:02 pm

On reboot after install I get an error on ACPI where it times out. Once after several reboots it finally made it through to the welcome screen to setup the user information and registration. then it stop working. any ideas?

Al said on : June 2nd, 2010 at 9:46 am

Everything works, except iweb. iweb doesn’t show any website, only a white area.

au10tic said on : June 4th, 2010 at 3:51 am

It took about 3 force restarts to pass the gray screen with circle going around, and after that i was able to go through the registration and boot into the OS. For those of you who are having issues turning off the guest OS, simply modify your configuration file (Mac OS X Server 10.6 (experimental).vmx) with notepad and change the following;

smc.present = “TRUE” to smc.present = “FALSE” now i am able to shutdown the guest OS with no panic erros.

wjian,ding said on : June 5th, 2010 at 4:15 am

i have installed the MAC OS on VM, but i have a problem, i cannot install any hardware drivers.

Hello said on : June 8th, 2010 at 1:33 pm

Hi guys, I’m going to be buying a Core i3-530 system soon. I plan on buying an H55 motherboard with support for Clarkdale’s integrated GPU, so I’ll be using integrated graphics. Just wanted to see if anyone was able to get OS X Snow Leopard up and running in VMware using a Core i3 CPU (it has VT-x, by the way).

desh said on : June 8th, 2010 at 1:37 pm

Hi Thanks to all the tutorial instructions and also for the posts 23,47. I now have everything working including display and sound on my (mac) dell xps 1330 running Win 7 with VMware. One problem though is with iWork (pages,keynote) i am not able to see anything with in the page window. I can see sidebar items…can anyone help please…..

india said on : June 8th, 2010 at 4:59 pm

after install and changing it to back darwin iso. all it does is restart over and over again

india said on : June 8th, 2010 at 5:08 pm

correction…all it does is restart several times and then i get “operating system not found” message

desh said on : June 9th, 2010 at 3:37 pm

I have now managed to install office for mac 2008 (word, xl,ppt) and works fine without any of ilife software issues…..

Albert Nietsnie said on : June 10th, 2010 at 1:25 pm

For a new and improved way of booting any Mac OS X guest in any VMware product on any Intel-based physical machine, see

insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=220750

geekydude said on : June 10th, 2010 at 2:20 pm

@ everyone
if it gives you this error ‏”Mac OS X is not supported with software virtualization. To run Mac OS X you need a host on which VMware Workstation supports hardware virtualization”
that means you will need a processor that has amd-v or intel-vt.
Rodrigo said: it has no way of installing without amd-v or intel-vt

geekydude said on : June 10th, 2010 at 2:22 pm

sorry,i meant intel vt-x not intel-vt

Shane said on : June 10th, 2010 at 7:42 pm

i am using VMware Player (latest) and i get to the install screen. do English > next > accept then when you have to pick the drive you install it to there is nothing. no hard drives or anything.. help me???

Shane said on : June 10th, 2010 at 7:49 pm

BTW i am running Windows 7 ultimate 64 bit on a hp pavilion DV 6500 CTO entertainment PC with a Intel(R) Mobile Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T7100 @ 1.80GHz. 2.00GB DDR2 ram. Quanta Motherboard 30D2. and a NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS @ 128MBytes

Shane

jblist said on : June 12th, 2010 at 8:22 pm

hey could either crunch or desh help me out here. i have an dell xps m1330. i installed the vmware tools and got my display working great. only problem i have is the audio. where would i download that needed file for the sound? do i download it for pc and install it in windows or do i need to get a mac driver? please let me know so i can get this fully working. appreciate the help guys. thanks!!

A Person said on : June 13th, 2010 at 10:05 pm

Can you boot up on windows still or can you manually uninstall snow leapord. and will this break my comouter??

Mohammad Faran said on : June 17th, 2010 at 12:14 pm

Hello Frndz…. I have read all the comments… and i wanna share my opinion…

First of all dont patch mac osx download a pre-patched file from your favourite torrent site…..

And after download you only have to open vmware and select the option open existin file… and amazingly it works…. without error…..

I am writing this suggestion not any other but from the virualized mac only….
(srry for my bad english)

aryan said on : June 29th, 2010 at 5:35 am

Can I use a Dual Core processor?

desh said on : June 30th, 2010 at 5:10 am

@jblist: Here is the procedure i followed. Download the sound drivers off the link on this webpage on the mac osx server directly and install them directly on the mac. enable and install vmware tools on the mac server ( a icon for the tools should be visible on your mac desktop if this works correctly). power down the server. open vmware workstation and right click the mac server from the left hand panel and go to edit Virtual Machine settings, in the submenu select device settings, look for sound card and select the option for ..connect at power on and : use host soudcard (make sure both these boxes are ticked. from the dropdown menu select the name of your soundcard (sigmatel on my xps). save settings and then power on the mac vm server again, go to system preferences and under sound menu you should now see your host sound card name, just select that and exit…and thats it. ensure that sound volume is max on both the host and mac server menus..let me know if this works.

Pavlos said on : June 30th, 2010 at 5:16 am

Ok I hope this isn’t too basic of a question.

I am in the market for a new laptop and I am wondering if I get a quadcore can I delegate 2 cores to running the vmware mac? I need to do various things on the mac and so far I haven’t found anything I can’t do on the virtual mac.

Having a mac on my pc would save me so much time and effortm you have no idea.

-Pav

Yonathan said on : June 30th, 2010 at 1:28 pm

You can change the screen size by pressing F8 on boot and entering “Graphics Mode”=”WidthxHeightxDepth” (Including “).
For example:
“Graphics Mode”=”1280×1024x32″ And for screen refresh rate you can add @Rate so you get:
“Graphics Mode”=”1280×1024x32@75″
32 (Depth) as in 32-bit colors.

For more commands like these enter “?” (Without “) when booting up.

Ajay said on : July 2nd, 2010 at 2:21 am

Hey, I’ve followed all the instructions here, but when I power on the machine, I end up getting this error below:

“Mac OS X is not supported with software virtualization. To run Mac OS X you need a host on which VMware Workstation supports hardware virtualization.”

jblist said on : July 4th, 2010 at 9:09 pm

@desh – works great! thanks for the help

desh said on : July 10th, 2010 at 5:09 am

@jblist: you are welcome, glad it worked. I have a question regarding boot up. Is it possible to boot up directly into mac osx on vmware or do i always have to go thru power up windows-vmware-macosx sequence?

Enable Virtualization in the BIOS Says:

[...] on Monday, April 5th 2010 5Apr In a previous post we wrote about how to install Mac OS X Snow Leopard on a PC using VMware Workstation. Often times, running an operating system inside of another operating system, using virtualization [...]
April 5th, 2010 at 5:21 am