Install Snow Leopard in VMWARE 7 Windows Edition
How to install Snow Leopard in VMWARE 7 and Windows host ? Virtualization of Snow Leopard (Client) is not officially supported/allowed by any virtualization solution. However a few modifications to the .vmx file and use a modified install disk as this will save a lot of trouble. Let me clear Apple licensing does not allow for the virtualization of OSX Client on any hardware and only allows for the virtualization OSX server on Apple hardware. Anything else is in violation of the license agreement. This article is for informational purposes only, you can never achieve full utilization of Mac OS X on VMWARE. So if you like the Mac then go ahead and buy a Mac.
Also Check Snow Leopard in VMWARE Post Installation Fixes and Tweaks for sound, graphics related mods after installation.
More Article of Interest
- How to Install Snow Leopard (10A432) on PC Hackintosh
- Install Snow Leopard 10.6 on AMD PC Hackintosh
- How to Convert Snow Leopard Retail Disk to .DMG
Requirements
- VMWARE 7 and Windows XP, Vista or 7
- Retail DVD of Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6
- Intel Based Machine, AMD isn’t supported.
- Patience, a Cup of coffee or Energy drink whatever you like.
- A pre-made Snow Leopard VMDK, dariwn_snow.iso Download (Mediafire) Or (Megaupload)
Instructions
Step One : Launch VMWARE Workstation and load the .vmx that came with the package you downloaded above. Now edit virtual machine settings for advance options.
Step Four : Like Boot 132 method now you need to replace the boot cd with the Snow Leopard Retail Install DVD. Right click on the CD icon in bottom of the VMWARE windows and click on Settings option.
Now change the options from ISO image to use physical drive and make sure you have Retail DVD already installed.
Step Five : Now navigate to boot screen and press “C” on your keyboard to select “Boot DVD”, again press F8 for advance options and type -v at the boot prompt then hit enter for booting with verbose mode.
Step Six : Now wait for 2-3 minutes and your Installation screen will appear. Now you can install Snow Leopard as usual. Before choosing the destination open Disk Utility and erase your Vmware HDD in to “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” format type. Under customization deselect printer drivers and language translations for trouble free installation.Once installation finishes your virtual machine will reboot automatically.
Step Seven : Follow Step Two again “Select CD/DVD drive options and in Connection select Use ISO image file and browse the Darwin_Snow.iso” now you can boot in to Snow Leopard you may need to force restart 2-3 times if Kernel Panic happens, once machine boot successfully you can set your preference etc.
Credits
Major credit goes to Prasys a.k.a. Pradessh you can follow prasys on Twitter @prasys and his blog here.
You can follow us on twitter @ihackinjosh You can also subscribe to our daily free e-mail news letter.
Known Issues
-
Some .dmg aren’t opening
-
Kernel Panic on every shut down so just force shut down after every kernel panic.
Also Check Snow Leopard in VMWARE Post Installation Fixes and Tweaks for sound, graphics related mods after installation.
I wrote how to do this on another site a couple months ago, you need to get a kernel and edit a file to stop the dmg error and the kernel panic
get this file
http://xnu-dev.googlecode.com/files/voodoo2_alpha3_intel.zip
get it in your mac environment on the root
then open the console and put this in
sudo pico /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist
Make it look like this
<key>Kernel</key>
<string>hd(0,2)/mach_kernel.voodoo.alpha3</string>
<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string>rd=disk0s2</string>
now your dmg files will open and you can even run pwnage tool
(previous post removed all the <> signs
Works fine under ubuntu 9.10 also, with workstation 7. Thnx for the how-to
As i told you on twitter there are other issues :
1. Doesn’t always load , stuck at the circle of death , you have to restart a lot .
2. After upgrading to 10.6.2 it took 15 minutes to load snow leopard .
3. many people who upgraded can’t control the mouse anymore , it moves but doesn’t click ( happened with me but after upgrading safari to latest version )
4. It never shut down or restart successfully from the system you have to shut down from vmware .
i think that this version works more stable on free Vmware Player 3 .
i also hope you can share how to force quit the system .
Thanks for the tutorial .
it aint finding my snow leapord disk am i missing something
I am stuck on step 5. I see the screen from step 4, i switch the CD drive to the physical drive with the Snow Leopard Install disc, then when I hit the “c” key to boot from DVD it says insert CD. I don’t know what i am doing wrong.
I am thinking of using this to sync my iphone under ubuntu. Does anybody know if the usb drives work correctly with this setup?
Thanks lazyweb.
I was wondering… .If you do this would you be able to run things such as Imovie or final cut pro?
Excellent write up – thanks for the information. I’ve wanted to “test drive” OSX for a long time.
I’m getting an error when I start the snow leopard install:
“Invalid front-side bus frequency 6600000 Hz”
VMWare then says the CPU has been disabled by the guest operating system and I need to power off.
any ideas?
Hi.. I’m getting this when booting up the first time:
“Mac OS X is not supported with software virtualization. To run Mac OS X you need a host on which VMware Fusion supports hardware virtualization.”
I’m not able to do anything..
Any suggestions??
Really nice post! I appreciate the share, this should be really useful and I know some of my friends who would be happy to use this information. Thanks!
i’m getting the following “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.” when trying to boot off the darwin snow image.
I’m attempting this now and I keep having problems with the step involving the f8 key, regardless of how many times and when I push it, I keep getting the same “Mac OSX isn’t supported with software virtualization”
Anyone know if this is possible with VirtualBox? It seems viable just wondering if anyone has had success with that.
I get a ‘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.’ error when I try to power up the machine…what am I doing wrong?
No idea why, but after trying repeatedly to get mine to boot with zero success rate, booting with the -v option has allowed me to boot every time without issue.
Can anyone comment generally on what performance is like? I did this recently under Ubuntu 9.10 on a quad core box with 8G of RAM and performance was pretty poor. I can see using it for occasional testing, but not for everyday use. What’s been your experience?
Worked for me. Fun stuff. But I couldn’t get the screen resolution to anything but 1024×768
@ Bryan
For your problem, after choose the original CD of Snow Leopard, clic on CD icon and select “Connect”. (Like Step Four)
Ok ?
if u get the virtualisation problem is because your CPU doesnt support hardware virtualisation and you’re out of luck?
Installed this easily on i7 920 W7 Ultimate 64bit. however, how can I increase resoltuion to 1920×1080 ?
I told the machine to boot my existing 10.6.1 system (on an MBR partition), and it worked, flawlessly! I’m amazed. I wonder if it’s because VMWare 7 just works, or you tweaked the VMX file.
I’m getting “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.”
VMware Workstation 7.0.0 build-203739
Windows 7 Professional X64
GA-P35-DS3L
Q9550
Any help? For those of you that this has worked for, what VMware client and version are you using?
Thanks!
@ Notlolo
Thanks! I feel stupid for not doing that.
@ zeros
“get this file
http://xnu-dev.googlecode.com/files/voodoo2_alpha3_intel.zip
get it in your mac environment on the root”
where is on the root? i have downloaded the file and unzipped it in my Macintosh HD, but should it be in a specific folder?
Is it possible to use the Snow Leopard disc that came with my Macbook? Or possibly make a Retail Disc from that disc?
i am trying this on a 13″ Dell Studio XPS from Windows 7 and VMWare Player. I opted to boot with -v; all looked good till it switched to Graphics mode as seen at http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4063/4226731468_dfb18b1eeb_o.png. It remains so forever. Anyway I can remain on verbose mode or to check the log files ?
I’m getting the same error as Russel:
“Invalid front-side bus frequency 6600000 Hz” when I start the install.
Okay got this working on my windows 7 PC and it boots in like 15 seconds on my SSD. However no sound. How do I fix it. I have an onboard Realtek card.
I’m getting the same error as many above:
“‘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.”
It seems this is a common problem. Does anyone know the answer?
For those that keep getting the “Mac OS X is not supported with software virtualization. To run Mac OS X you need a host on which VMware Fusion supports hardware virtualization.” error. I was having the same thing, it means your processor does not support virtualization, you would probably get the same thing on if you try to use virtual pc with xp mode on windows 7. So I was really curious why my intel core 2 duo processor did not support it. Then I was checking out my BIOS Settings, and the virtualization feature was off on my BIOS. WOW!! I did not even know it had that option, so try to see if that fixes your problem, if you don’t have any setting about virtualization it could be because your processor does not support it. As I am writing this post MAC OS X 10.6 is installing as a virtual machine, hopefully it works. THANK YOU!!!!!
I’ve followed your guide and it has turned out great.
Hope someone can figure out how to increase the resolution soon. I’ve tried to do it in the VM settings but when I go back to the mac settings, it still only has one resolution to choose from.
Also has anyone updated the system (apple updates) or will this mess things up?
Is it possible to change the resolution? Only option is 1024×768
I tried zero’s voodoo drivers suggestion, but I get a kernel panic “unable to find driver for this platform: \”ACPI\” “. Any idea of how to fix this?
Thanks!
Ash
Thanks for your walkthrough of the Snow Leopard install process.
I tried it and it worked like a charm. Here’s a screenshot of my running VMware machine.
I’m curious to see if it’ll install successfully when the virtual machine is configured with more than 1 processor. I may try it soon.
Cheers,
Swift Kick
@psyntium,@Nick,@Jerry,@Jono,@Evinho,@Eric,@Colin
To fix the issue “software virtualization you have to rnable this feature on bios settings like this :
http://www.aatkcoblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/boot-virtualization.jpg
I did everything as described in tutorial but my setup can`t boot up after setup. It`s stops on a line:
ACPI_SMC_PlatformPlugin::start – waitForService(resourceMatching(AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement) timed out
It will be very nice if someone could help with that
after restarting 2 times it boots up! Thanks for your tutorial.
this is awsome!
got it goin on a Dell Studio XPS Laptop
running resolution 1920*1200!!! on a dell monitor
sound is working great too!
Anyone else getting this error: ‘/library/preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist’ not found
I have enabled the virtualization feature in my bios put i still get the “Mac OS X is not supported with software virtualization” error. My PC is
Studio XPS 17, 6GB RAM, Intel 2.9 GHz Duo, Win7 Ultimate (64-bit). what am i doing wrong?? please help
Heres some helpfull things
http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=172474
and heres a post I made in the beginning of november
http://modmyi.com/forums/general-iphone-chat/691292-pwnage-tool-windows-7-via-vmware.html
I wonder how many people were immediately stopped in their tracks by being pointed to a bz2 archive to start a windows project.
I built my computer a year ago in hopes of making it a Hackintosh. I chose the wrong hardware and ended up making it just a PC. This is the first method I have seen that actually worked with my setup. Thanks! Now, is it possible to install VMware tools?
What is “Hardware Virtualization”? I mean – what technology ? So my cpu ( http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=29761 ) support VT-x virtuaization , what is type of that virtualization technology ?
Because I m little flustered .
@zeros
I downloaded the file and put it in my root folder (which I believe is just “/” on the file location, right?) I then went into terminal and put exactly what you had. When I shut down it gave me the kernel panic, but I expected that. However, what I did not expect is that when I restarted, on the screen with the apple logo, it gave me a message saying:
Please contact the Voodoo Kernel dev-team with a photo of the information printed below, along with a description of your system configuration and what you were doing at the time the kernel panic occurred. I will attach a link to a screen shot of what happened.
My system config is 4096MB of RAM, 250GB Virtual expanding Hard Drive, 1 CPU with 4 cores. Other than that, everything is unaltered from the original setup.
Here is the screenie: http://tinyurl.com/ygfn469
I downloaded the package but can’t see any .vmx file. Is it on the iso image? What am I missing?
Thx!
The vmware log might help vmware gurus to diagnose the issue.
I’m getting the same error as Russel and 1buprofen…
“Invalid front-side bus frequency 6600000 Hz” when I start the install.
i have successfully got tiger working in a VM, but would love to have snow leopard.
looking in the log: (and summarizing)
CDROM READ FAILED
the CPU has been disabled by the guest operating system. you will need to power off the vm at this point
will post full log if need be
*Update*
If you have it running fine after the initial install, don’t use software update. I applied the apple updates and now my VM doesn’t start up anymore. It just hangs at the grey screen with the apple logo
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