You know how things get easier with practice? Well, there wasn’t much required for this feat: Installing Mac OS X 10.6 (a.k.a. Snow Leopard) into a VMware Workstation 7 virtual machine. Workstation 7 appears to have greatly improved support for the Mac operating systems to the point that installing Snow Leopard into a virtual machine is much easier than it was with Mac OS X 10.5.6 under VMware 6.5.2. In fact, in this version (I’m using 7.0.0 build-203739), you can install VMware Tools yourself, and enable sound!
Credit Where It’s Due
I actually did very little experimentation/exploration this time. I did some cherry picking of steps from a number of places (most notably, the Insanely Mac forums). I give particular credit to Talyn’s post in that forum for giving me the clue to use the ISO image instead of the DMG, and for the Ensoniq audio driver link.
Part 1: Baking the Cake
Here We Go…
Before you begin making any modifications, please read through these instructions at least once, just to make all the steps are clear and that you haven’t missed anything.
Let’s get started:
- First, get yourself the retail version of Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). This will only work with the retail version of the operating system DMG. Use your favorite search site to find the DMG. Since you’ll need to use the ISO version for this tutorial, you might want to find that instead, allowing you to skip the next step.
- Next, convert the DMG file into an ISO. I used dmg2iso to convert my retail DMG to ISO. If you plan to use a converter other than the one I’m recommending, beware of converters that create ISOs that are considerably smaller than the original DMG. They probably won’t work.
- Download darwin-wks7.zip and extract its single file, “darwin.iso”. You’ll be using this in a couple of places, so remember where you saved it.
- Grab vmware-darwin-200.zip, and extract its contents. This will create a folder called “vmware-darwin-200/” that contains all the archive’s files. This distribution will need to be installed into your VMware Workstation 7 directory. Although instructions for installing this are included with the archive, it simply takes a “
setup.cmd install” from within the extracted folder to complete. However, before you actually perform the install, you need to copy the “darwin.iso” file you extracted from darwin-wks7.zip into the “vmware-darwin-200/” folder, replacing the file with the same name that is already there. Once the new “darwin.iso” is in place, you may proceed with the install. - In VMware Workstation 7, create a new virtual machine. You should use the same settings as those documented in Mac OS X 10.5.6 under VMware 6.5.2. The interface has changed a bit in VMware Workstation 7, so some screen shots will not be exact. However, it doesn’t have to be an exact match, since in this tutorial, instead of altering one or two lines of the resulting VMX file as we did in the Leopard tutorial, we’ll be replacing the contents of the entire file as well.
- At this point, close Workstation 7. Locate the VMX file that was newly created for your VM; for example, if you named your VM “Mac OS X 10.6”, then the file you’ll want to locate is called “Mac OS X 10.6.vmx”. Open this file in your favorite text editor (not a word processor!), and replace the entire contents of the file with the following text:
.encoding = "windows-1252"
config.version = "8"
virtualHW.version = "7"
maxvcpus = "4"
scsi0.present = "TRUE"
scsi0.virtualDev = "lsilogic"
memsize = "1024"
scsi0:0.present = "TRUE"
scsi0:0.fileName = "Mac OS X 10.6.vmdk"
ide1:0.present = "TRUE"
ide1:0.fileName = "M:\SL.iso"
ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-image"
floppy0.startConnected = "FALSE"
floppy0.fileName = ""
floppy0.autodetect = "TRUE"
ethernet0.present = "TRUE"
ethernet0.connectionType = "bridged"
ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"
ethernet0.wakeOnPcktRcv = "FALSE"
ethernet0.addressType = "generated"
usb.present = "TRUE"
ehci.present = "TRUE"
sound.present = "TRUE"
sound.fileName = "-1"
sound.autodetect = "TRUE"
pciBridge0.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge4.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge4.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"
pciBridge4.functions = "8"
pciBridge5.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge5.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"
pciBridge5.functions = "8"
pciBridge6.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge6.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"
pciBridge6.functions = "8"
pciBridge7.present = "TRUE"
pciBridge7.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"
pciBridge7.functions = "8"
vmci0.present = "TRUE"
roamingVM.exitBehavior = "go"
displayName = "Mac OS X 10.6"
guestOS = "darwin10-64"
nvram = "FreeBSD 64-bit.nvram"
virtualHW.productCompatibility = "hosted"
extendedConfigFile = "FreeBSD 64-bit.vmxf"
ethernet0.generatedAddress = "00:0c:29:bd:20:0f"
tools.syncTime = "FALSE"
uuid.location = "56 4d 88 b8 b2 24 d5 cc-10 76 a6 69 9f cb f9 46"
uuid.bios = "56 4d 7d f0 84 2d 67 43-25 a6 19 4f 14 bd 20 0f"
cleanShutdown = "FALSE"
replay.supported = "TRUE"
replay.filename = ""
scsi0:0.redo = ""
pciBridge0.pciSlotNumber = "17"
pciBridge4.pciSlotNumber = "21"
pciBridge5.pciSlotNumber = "22"
pciBridge6.pciSlotNumber = "23"
pciBridge7.pciSlotNumber = "24"
scsi0.pciSlotNumber = "16"
usb.pciSlotNumber = "32"
ethernet0.pciSlotNumber = "33"
sound.pciSlotNumber = "34"
ehci.pciSlotNumber = "35"
vmci0.pciSlotNumber = "36"
vmotion.checkpointFBSize = "16777216"
ethernet0.generatedAddressOffset = "0"
vmci0.id = "347938831"
tools.remindInstall = "FALSE"ich7m.present = "TRUE"
keyboard.vusb.enable = "TRUE"
mouse.vusb.enable = "TRUE"
usb:0.present = "TRUE"
usb:1.present = "TRUE"
usb:1.deviceType = "hub"
usb:0.deviceType = "mouse"
monitor.virtual_exec = "hardware"
monitor.virtual_mmu = "software"
ide1:0.startConnected = "TRUE"
disable_acceleration = "FALSE"
checkpoint.vmState = ""
ide1:0.autodetect = "TRUE"
vmi.present = "FALSE"
smc.present = "FALSE"Alter the lines italicized above to match the name you gave to your VM. As you can see in this example, I used the name “Mac OS X 10.6”.
- Restart Workstation 7, and select the VMX file you just modified. Mount your converted ISO file (the one you converted from the DMG) into the VM using “Use ISO image file” (you’ll see that it is currently pointing to something called “
M:\SL.iso“). Note that this differs from the Leopard tutorial, where we used a logical drive where the iDeneb ISO had been mounted. - Check the settings of the VM, and adjust those things that you want. For example, increase or decrease the amount a RAM allocated, the processors accessed, etc. In most cases, you should leave the settings as they are.
- Power on the VM. If everything went well, you should find yourself prompted to hit “F8” to enter boot options. Do NOT enter the “Graphics Mode” trick suggested in the Leopard tutorial. Leave the VM to use the resolution it wants for now. The reason for this is that we will be installing the VMware tools into this VM, and setting a Graphics Mode explicitly (either from the boot prompt, or using the /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist modification) will hose your VM to the point of making it unusable once the VMware tools are activated. You can enter the “-v” flag it you like (I always do).
- Once you reach the install screen, follow the same partitioning steps as found in the Leopard tutorial, with this exception: The “Master Boot Record” format must be “GUID Partition Table” for Snow Leopard to function.
- Apply your partition formatting, and proceed with the installation.
Part 2: Adding the Icing
Now that you’ve gotten Snow Leopard installed (you do have it installed, right?), you’ll want to get some final touches applied. Leave the retail ISO mounted in the VM, and you should be able to reboot at will with no issues.
Here are a few final things to do:
- Perform an Apple software update; e.g., my retail ISO installed 10.6, but there was an update to 10.6.2 available. Reboot after updates are applied.
- Download and install the Ensoniq Audio Driver for Snow Leopard. This package will enable audio in the Snow Leopard VM (yay!).
- Finally, install the VMware Tools distribution. Installing this will give you, among other things, the ability to change the VM’s screen resolution via the OS X System Preferences.
- “Eject” the Mac OS X Install CD ROM from within Snow Leopard. This will disconnect the device from the operating system.
- While the VM is running, right-click on the CD ROM widget at the bottom-right of the VMware window, opening its pop-up menu:
- In the “Settings…” panel, mount the “darwin.iso” file (remember where you saved it?) in place of the retail ISO image you used to install Snow Leopard, and press “Ok”.
- From the CD ROM pop-up menu once again, select the “Connect” option to connect the device back to the VM. This will mount the “darwin.iso” image into the running Snow Leopard VM:
- Open the mounted image, and drag the “Install VWware Tools” package to your Snow Leopard desktop to make a copy of it:
- Unmount the “darwin.iso” image within Snow Leopard, and reverse the process you performed to make it available. Re-select the retail ISO image, and re-connect it.
- Install the VMware Tools package, and reboot your Snow Leopard VM.
Part 3: Having a Piece
I must say, compared to the hassle of getting Leopard running in VMware, this was streamlined and painless. The “Holy Grail” now appears to be comfortably situated in the cabinet, along side the other drinking glasses. Running OS X in a virtual machine is no longer a “new frontier.” Now, instead of focusing on the process, you are free to focus on using the product.
Have fun!
Bob's Mental Moshpit 
Hi, Thanks for your helpful tutorial. The issue I am having is that the mouse and keyboard are non responsive. I am installing through a remote connection via logmein. have you seen this before>
No, sorry. I do straight, same-machine installations and then deploy remotely if necessary (i.e., create with VMware Workstation, run on Viewer/Fusion).
Might it be that the IP address of the remote connection changed somehow as a result of the installation? If so, there would no longer be a route to the destination.
Thank you so MUCH! Really as u said “Now, instead of focusing on the process, you are free to focus on using the product!!!!”
there were some error, but was easy 🙂 to fix!
I tweak’d up settings in vmware, stil worked (processor automatic & 2 cores)
after installation done & restart, boot up cudn find OS “Operating System not found” then had to boot up wid darwin & it automatically booted up the drive 😛 but then “keyboard not found” (then had to diable serial ports and other ports in vmware bios) after that went so fine..
Internet working, VMware tools installed, Currently updating Mac OS X, hope sound works, and i dont know whether or not to install vga driver (nvidia)
In the end, its done! THANKS MATE!
Sorry, I have the same problem, Operating System not found.
But how do you boot up wid darwin ?
epic fail doesnt work, says my pc doesnt suppirt hardware virtulization, lol my computer is a powerhouse, epic fail.
Bill, you might check your BIOS and ensure that virtualization support is enabled. That’s about the only reason I can think of that a “powerhouse” would not support hardware virtualization.
please check the bios setup of your computer. enable visualization.
wow, thanks a lot man. It seems to be great. I’ve been searching a lot for a solution to install mac os x on my pc =) I’m still downloading the retail version for mac os x which would take a while but I’m very positive that it will work =)
I will post the results later.
Can someone post a link with the retail verson?
Please do not post any links here to direct file downloads.
If you put forth a little effort, you can find one via your favorite site. For example, here are several potentials: http://thepiratebay.org/search/Mac%20OS%20X%2010.6%20retail/0/99/0
Note that I do not endorse any of these; you’ll have to discover for yourself one that works for you.
What about a link to the working vmware image? Can someone upload it’s working image?
The dmg file I downloaded did not work. it was saying, “Final Retail” and it was a 6GB file but the dmg2iso couldn’t convert it because it the file was corrupted… I also tried mmagiciso but it didn’t work either.
I’m not going to download another 6GBs. I will just live with my win 7.
Hello Bob,
happy new year!
I am stuck at step 9. I converted the DMG to an ISO. I select the ISO in vmware and fire up the virtual machine.
I press F8 and when I try to boot the CD (select c), it says that I should enter a MACOSX dvd.
Kind Regards,
Frank.
Hello Bob,
thanks for great guide lines, exactly like you said this is as smooth as it can be comparing to previous versions of Mac Os X and Vmware.
Everything worked for me.
Jakub
Done like this, Workstation 7 refuses to boot again with “The guest operating system is not Mac OS X Server.” error.
See here for a fix: http://blog.rectalogic.com/2008/08/virtualizing-mac-os-x-leopard-client.html
Thanks for the great tutorial. Worked like a charm. Just want to give you guys the heads up that I’ve been able to reboot the virtual machine without have the install disc mounted.
Fantastic Guide! Everthings perfect….. except… where ist FullHD resolution in the Displays Panel? I own a FullHD TFT and want to use the full res in fullscreen… hmpf
I get the following message when I power my vm on: “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.”
Any ideas please, I am running a Packard Bell Easynote TR87.
Specs: http://www.packardbell.co.uk/showroom/notebooks/easynote-tr/easynote-tr87-bt-021-LX.B9802.001-1652.html
Thanks in advance.
The hardware specs for your laptop appear to be sufficient (I’m using an ASUS laptop with similar specs that can run this just fine).
I can’t offer any advice specific to this VM, though. As you can see from the other comments here, it does work as flawlessly for some as it did for me.
The only hardware-related advice I could give you is that you might check your machine’s BIOS to be sure that virtualization support is enabled. On most new machines, it is by default. However, I’ve run into some myself that needed it to be turned on explicitly. I’ve seen comments from other people who also needed to enable it before they could move forward.
Good luck, John. 🙂
Does your CPU support Intel Vanerpool technology? Or AMD’s equivelent?
Thanks, will try it.
Sadly I don’t think it supports vm, but thanks anyway.
This works for me with CPU supporting VT-x
Your .vmx saves me from the hassle of restarting over and over again (this is what happens when I used .vmx from hackintosh tutorial)
Thanks a lot
Can you upload the entire vmware image folder for snow leopard to rapidshare or a torrent site please
I did this for the 10.5.6 VM. I’ll let somebody else who has successfully constructed from my instructions do this for 10.6.
Hello Bobhood,
Thanks a lot for this article.GOD bless you… :).It worked.
Do you also have any package to make webcam in Laptop work similar to Audio file?
No, unfortunately, I can’t help you there. Having working network and audio is a giant leap in and of themselves; other niceties are left as exercises for the reader. 😉
This is very very good. Thank-you!
I have OS X 10.6 now running on an Intel i5 2.66, 4GB and it works extremely well. It’ll even play SD video to a level. Only thing that won’t work properly, is GFX acceleration to make it a true desktop machine.
It’s nice to be able to use it properly though.
There, you are limited to the capabilities of VMware, I think. Nothing anybody can do about that, AFAIK.
Great job on this. It worked well. Only problem I’ve found is the VM tools doesn’t work with drag and drop between Win7 and the OSX 10.6 VM. Is there a way to get drag and drop to work? I assume it’s a VM tools problem since that should allow drag and drop. Ubuntu and XP VM’s have drag and drop working on same system.
Hi all,
I have a few of problems : (I use VMWare WorkStation 7, and I have a DMG of 6GB of Mac OS X Snow Leopard).
First, dmg2iso don’t work, when I run it, a CMD opens and closes instantly.
So I decided to download UltraISO, and convert the DMG into ISO, it works but I think that there is really a problem.
I continued, and I extraxcted the compressed folder “vmware-darwin-200” to the VMWorksStation directory, replaced the darwin.iso like said… and mysteriously, when i run setup.cmd for install it, that do nothing :/.
Then, I created a Virtual machine, following the step and modifying the text file with the name that I gave to the name of the Virtual machine.
And to finish, I mount the ISO of Mac to the VMWorkstation, powering the machine and after a minutes, there is “Operating System not found”.
Help me please, I tryied to explain as well as I can my problem.
Hello Sylra,
The link which Bobhood has given for dmg2iso strictly says to make use of dmg2img.dmg2iso did not work for me as well.So I tried dmg2img and it works very well as it is said on that linked page.Please do use that.
Regarding your statement “Then, I created a Virtual machine, following the step and modifying the text file with the name that I gave to the name of the Virtual machine.” I would like to know what do you mean by text file? There is no text file as I understand.Pardon me if I am wrong.It is .vmx file opened in text editor.I hope this is what you wanted to say.
Regarding your last problem,first attach darwin iso image and boot.While booting press F8 so that you will get 3 options.Now you can look for CD symbol at the bottom similar to other symbols like Network,USB etc.Right click the symbol and select ‘settings’ and change the iso image to Snow leopard image.Then press the option ‘c’ which says ‘Boot from DVD’.Now I think you will surely see what you wanted desparately.
I think when Syrla said text file, it meant editing the VMX in a text editor? That’s what I assumed anyway.
Syrla, dmg2iso shouldn’t have a problem running. Is there something blocking it on your system? You are running the exec and not a compressed file correct? The new one is actually DMG2IMG I think but should work the same.
Did you run the setup.exe command with the darwin 200? Also, did you run it as admin? If you run from a cmd and don’t give it admin access, it won’t actually copy them. It will show that as 0 files copied in the cmd window.
If you go step by step, it should work if nothing looks odd. I am running Windows 7 and it worked great as far as the install goes for me. I’m not sure how it would do on other versions though. Since DMG2 didn’t run for you, it sounds like there may be some problem on your system.
Did anyone find a way to get drag and drop or copy and paste to work? Unity doesn’t work but I expected that. Copy and paste works for text between my Win7 and 10.6 but not for copy/paste actual files. I might just setup a network transfer between directories on the 2 OS’s. Only USB device I get showing up is the webcam. Kind of surprised I get webcam on it.
Hello Murray,
Do you have Laptop with built in web cam or Desktop with USB based external webcam?I would like to know which one you are talking about?
If built in web cam in laptop, please let me know how did u do it?Is it just by connecting it to guest?
waiting for reply…..
Hello Murray,
My webcam is working.Thanks for your comment.
Sumi, if there was anything special you needed to do in order to get it working, please consider posting the instructions here so others can benefit.
Good to hear. Mine is a laptop cam and just connected it to guest from host. No other USB shows up on mine. Do you have any other USB devices or hub working? I have to look through VM docs cause I’m probably just missing something.
I routinely connect my iPod Touch to my 10.6 VM via USB. It even auto-launches iTunes when I connect it, so USB pass-thru is definitely working.
First, thanks for the help 🙂
About the CMD, I think that I have a problem but it is only when I execute setup.cmd directly, because I run a CMD, and with specify the file-path with “cd” that works for “setup.cmd install” 🙂
When I specified textfile, yes, I am sorry, it was the .wmx file opened with a text editor ^^
After that I done what you said about to mount darwin.iso first, then, I launched the virtual machines, I chosen “c” after monunt the Mac OS X Snow Leopard’s iso first.
But now, I have a new problem :
I get a :
Invalid front-side bus frequency 66000000 Hz.
Disabling the CPU …
In the tutorial, it is said to choose a 64bits, but bottom of that, I get a warning about 64bits will not work.
But in 32bits, nothing changes.
It was a host port issue on the USB (second port) and it’s working now. Thanks. bobhood, did you get the webcam working? Everything looks good now. I don’t need the copy and paste now that the port is working for my external drives. Unity would be cool but not a big deal.
Hello Sylra,
I can help you directly through remote desktop using Teamviewer kind of application,if you wish to do so.It is difficult to tell on such issues but a bit of direct look will help a lot.Please let me know.
Also please do confirm one thing whether your PC supports hardware virtualisation and if yes; you have enabled it in BIOS,otherwise SL will not work.
Please also confirm that you have replaced the .vmx contents with what Bobhood has given above.
I let you my hotmail adress to discuss for TeamViewer : sylra2@hotmail.com
About the BIOS, I didn’t see any hardware virtualisation on it.
But other Virtual OS runs on VMworkstation (I have already installed Linux And XP xD)
Don’t you have gmail or skype ID?
Hi sorry for thé late, Sumi, my Skype ID is sylra83
My CPU (T6400) does not seems to support virtualization. right ? (moreover my easyNote MT85 bios will probably never give me access to this function).
is there any way to have it working as a kind of software emulation (I know i’ll have bad performances) ?
Thx.
Mine doesn’t either, I don’t think there is sorry
Wow, thanks for this. It’s up and running, 1 snag.
The command script from vmware-darwin-200.zip needed to be run elevated, even though I have local admin rights
Thanks again!
Apologies, Rag. I always use Windows as an Administrator, so I do not encounter these sort of issues.
Thank you for your help! Between your instructions and Taranfx’s, I’m now smoothly running 10.6.2 on a Dell Latitude D630. Best of all, I can end the endless quest for compatible kexts that makes a D630 hackintosh satisfying only to enthusiasts and masochists.
I found one or two things confusing in the steps above:
No. 4: I’m primarily a Mac user, so setup.cmd install meant nothing to me. At first I thought it was a Terminal command. It actually calls for a Run command line in Windows. You can invoke it by right-clicking inside the vmware-darwin-200 folder.
No. 7: This I had the most trouble with, and I’m still not sure what it’s saying (more a reflection on me than the writer). In the Taranfx guide, you use an iso called darwin_snow to trick VMware into booting first your installer—I used a retail DVD—and then your installed 10.6. To do that you select the iso, then connect it by right-clicking the DVD icon on the lower right of the VMware window. After that it boots normally.
Again, thanks for the work to make these instructions. Here’s the link to the Taranfx guide:
http://www.taranfx.com/how-to-install-snow-leopard-vmware-workstation-windows
Has anybody installed EFI to get QE/CI working?
whenever i start up the VM 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.” but i have run many VM on my computer before…
any idea why it does it to mac and nothing else…?
forgot to add
virtualisation is enabled inside my bios
on my laptop i have a AMD Turion 64 x2 TL-60
and on my desktop i have a AMD Athlon 64 x2 4400
Please check once again thoroughly for BIOS settings.
Check whether there are 2-3 additional supportive settings.
Thanks for this great write-up, Bob. It worked like a great!
A couple of comments:
1. You mention that we should download and install the Ensoniq package, but don’t make it clear how to do so. I initially downloaded it to Windows but I couldn’t understand how to add it to the VM, until it hit me that it had to be installed from inside the OS X itself. I downloaded it from there and sure enough, it installed like a charm. I got sound!
2. I’m noticing the sound is a bit choppy, whether I’m playing a youtube clip or an mp3 file. It’s dissapointing. Is there any way to improve it? I have a couple of sound cards on this box (SoundBlaster and SigmaTel). Is there any way to get the VM to use those?
Thanks!
I sometimes get choppy sound also but not all the time. I thought it might just be a slowdown on the system but it’s on a quad with plenty of memory. Might be the driver after all.
Do you know how to switch on Hardware virtualization through Phoenix award workstation bios?
No, sorry, Thomas, I don’t. I had thought (perhaps incorrectly) that most all motherboard/processor pairs manufactured in recent years that are capable of supporting virtualization had it enabled by default in the BIOS. Come to think of it, since I’ve been using virtualization through software, I’ve never had to go into any BIOS and explicitly enable its support on any recent machine.
Just found out that it is hidden in my bios
i have edited it but just ended up with a non booting board
luckily i got hold of another bios chip and hot flashed it so it works again now
About “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: If you are using Windows then use a version of VMware below of 7.0.0 build-203739 😉
It runs perfectly for me using that exact VMware build. Not sure why it would be an issue for you. I would suspect the hardware, not the software.
linky please 🙂
Is it possible to do this with server or does it have to be workstation 7
Hey sumi, I’m having the same problem as sylra “Invalid front-side bus frequency 66000000 Hz.
Disabling the CPU …”
So I was wondering could you go in my system directly and check things out, my email is itommysebastian@gmail.com
hello Tommy,
I can do that provided you have Teamviewer or similar Remote desktop software installed on your PC.
make sure u copy that data(in step 6) into your vmware file..
it helped me getting through the “Invalid front-side bus” thing..
thats the only thing which fixes this stuff, just copy the configuration, follow step 6, dats it!
Maybe is your iso version of leopard. try mine
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5100546/Mac_OS_X_Server_10.6_-_Snow_Leopard_-_RETAIL_(real)
works like a charm. installed on a win7, intel core i3, hp laptop.
I am at step 9. I am getting a “Please wait for DVD to load…” After some time it cancels and then I am given a boot menu
c:Boot DVD
h: Boot first Hard Disk
e: Eject DVD
Your choice:
I choose c. It then tells me “You should eject this CD and insert an OS X disc”
What do I now? I know that the dmg is legit and the iso is larger than the dmg. Please help!
Hi,
How did you get it to work? I cant get past that pesky ‘wait for dvd screen’ at all >.<
@Jane:
Can you tell how did you eventually fix the problem?
I encounter the same problem using ISO retail version downloaded here: http://addictdownload.com/mac-os-x-10-6-snow-leopard-full-retail-dvd-with-bootcamp/
Thanks!
Br,
x9090
Ok got it to run! Yippie,but I don’t have any networking any assistance?
I am new to mac and don’t understand how to convert the dmg file into and iso. Is this done on a mac or on a pc? I believe I have conpleted the rest of the steps successfully but don’t know how to load the iso?
The assumption here in this tutorial is that you want to create a running OS X 10.6 on a PC. I guess there’s nothing that says you couldn’t create the OS X VM for running under OS X, but that is more an exercise than a practical result.
So, to answer your question, everything here is done on the PC (Windows Vista 64-bit, in my case).
Thankyou!!
Worked good in Ubuntu 8.10 32 bits (VMware Workstation 7). The only thing why I’m going to uninstall it is because it’s slower than Leopard, at least in my computer. I think Graphics is the problem.
And the other issue is that Preview is no showing any image.
It seems like the installation is not identifying an Hard Disk.
I have followed everything, don’t know what’s going wrong.
In case you or anyone else didn’t figure this out, (I have only just finished with this tutorial and it was brilliant), I googled the hard drive thing and found that you have to go to disk utilities and erase the disk you plan to use, then it will show up during installation.
Thanks for all these instructions and follow up, I am eager to give it a try on my ubuntu 9.10 host OS.
Do you know if there is some reason VMWare Player couldn’t be used to create the image instead of VMWare Workstation?
Does the VMWare Tools for Mac OS X provide the unity capability (guest windows merged into host desktop) like the VMWare Tools for Windows?
As far as I know, as the name implies, VMware “Player” is only designed to run pre-created images and VMware appliances (which is why it’s free). You actually need a commerical VMware product (like Workstation) to create the images that Player uses.
As for unity support, although I’ve never actually tried it myself, my guess would be no, it would not be supported in this particular configuration. However, somebody else may have attempted it and succeeded.
Thanks for the speedy reply. VMWare Player, despite the name, is actually able to create images as well, at least in its current incarnation. So depending on my success with finding a pre-created image, I will give it a shot with Player and report back.
And from what I’ve been able to further discern, I believe you are correct that unity is currently only offered for Windows VM’s. But it also sounds like it’s a young feature, so maybe Mac guest support will come down the road.
QE/IC not working
please help!
You can use mkisofs and mount to create iso of dmg:
mount -o loop Mac.dmg /mac
mkisofs -J -r -o Mac.iso /mac
hey
i can’t get is started
i think its because of my amd cpu
how can i let it work on a amd cpu?
thanks
I doubt I can help out much with that, since I only run Intel CPUs. This post may (or may not) help you with that, from the Insanely Mac forums: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=181876. In addition, you could try Googling for other hits.
Of particular interest in that post is what he says in step #1: “…AMD cant boot with vanila [sic] kernel…”. It would seem to me that, if you have to jump through hoops to get Snow Leopard to launch on a stand-alone AMD machine, it probably won’t be easy (or even possible) it will be to get it to work within a VMware image on a box with that processor.
Somebody else here may have been through this already, though, and might be able to give you better feedback.
You can use SnowOSX v3.6 which has got patched kernel option for SL on AMD.
Thanks for the great how-to. I was able to get snow leopard to boot without the iso image attached by installing EP45UD3P Snow Leopard.pkg
before i try this, i am wondering if anyone has had any luck running the unity iphone devkit to a satisfactory standard?
Thanks !!! finally this is a method that worked for me. I am using the darwin.iso mounted to boot since it wont boot with out it. other then that it worked great !!! I am installing the iphone sdk now and doing the update to 10.6.2
This is awesome. I’d been trying to install SL on Virtual Box using the tutorial at taranfx for a while now with no luck. This worked, for the most part, like an absolute charm. A couple of things:
1. no matter what, I couldn’t get the image I made with my legit copy of Snow Leopard to work. Just wouldn’t boot. In the end I had to download a dmg (snowleopard_10a432_userdvd.dmg).
2. couldn’t use dmg2iso on either the legit dmg or the non-legit one. Said a plist was corrupt. In the end, from the same site I downloaded dmg2img which makes an img not an iso but it worked perfectly and VMWare will load an img anyway.
3. Despite having a Core I7 with 6Gb RAM, and having devoted 2GB of that RAM and 2 cores to the VM, the VM still runs pretty slowly. Any tips on speeding things up?
Thank you anyway — this is a great and very helpful post.
I’m having a weird issue I wondered anyone else on here has had.
My virtual machine I created with the help of this site freezes when I leave it and come back after a fairly long period of time.
My theory is that it’s happening when the windows machine (host) is powering its hard disks down after a certain amount of inactivity. I haven’t verified this yet, so if anyone else has had and fixed this problem and knows what it is, please let me know!
Thanks
Lee
Actually, any active VM will “freeze” in this fashion whenever the HDD on which it lives becomes inaccessible (by, for example, powering off). I experienced this early on while I was creating my VMware VMs because I housed them on a Western Digital My Book Studio Edition II, which had a nasty tendency to try to be “green” by putting itself to sleep at unpredictable times of its own choosing. I had to force the device to stay awake on my schedule (see my other post about it here on the Mental Moshpit if you’re interested).
Aside from that, I did experience inexplicable freezing of the Mac OS X VM using “Leopard” (10.5.x) if the VM was left idle for too long, or was not the topmost window (I never really figured out which it was). I’ve yet to experience that with the “Snow Leopard” VM, but that may be because I’m aware of the proclivity, and I try to keep it busy while it is running. I’ve been meaning to just leave it idle in the background to see if it actually does freeze like “Leopard”, but haven’t tried it yet.
I had the same issue. In “System Preferences” > “Energy Saver” change both options to “never”!
I had the same issue. In “System Preferences” > “Energy Saver” change both options to “never”!
I just wanted to say thank you for the step-by-step guide, followed them word for word and its working great.
Works great. Thanks for the tutorial.
I have no problems until I install the 10.6.2 install. Then my vm constantly reboots.
I have an hp pavilion dv6 with intel i3
Updating is always a danger, of course, because you never know what Apple is going to do (deliberately or accidentally) that might break OS X with respect to functioning within a VM. However, I have migrated from 10.6.1 to 10.6.2 to 10.6.3 in the same VM, and I personally have experienced no issues whatever in the process.
After upgrading from 10.6 to 10.6.3 I keep getting: “A Virtual CPU has entered the shutdown state.” Any ideas on how to resolve this issue? I am using ThinkPad T410 with intel i5 CPU.
Try using iBoot Supported as your initial boot loader
http://tonymacx86.blogspot.com/2010/05/iboot-supported-with-vanilla-kernel-for.html
Was the only way I could get 10.6.3 running inside workstation7 on win7/64 on an i5.
hi DC,
I am facing the same problem even when I use iboot as my initial loader. I was able to get 10.6 working.
I use vmware 7, windows 7 on an i7 processor
B E A U T I F U L
already in 10.6.3 and no problems so far.
Many thanks for all the effort.
I have the same problem “A Virtual CPU has entered the shutdown state.”
labtop hp pavilion intel i7 windows 7 64 bit
any recommendation
plzz help
I have the same problem “A Virtual CPU has entered the shutdown state.”
labtop hp pavilion intel i7 windows 7 64 bit
any recommendation
plzz help
Wow thank you sooo much for this guide, I am actually writing from within the MAC OSX virtual machine.
Big thanks.
Hi guys. Install went well. But after getting it up and running (updated, vmware tools installed) I have notice performance issues. For example, playback of media is choppy and slow.
I have tried changing to a dual core vCPU and changed the virtualisation engine a bit, but to no avail. I have also converted the vdisk to a pre-allocated disk to try and speed things up (vmware-vdiskmanager). Still no joy.
I am running VMware Workstation 7 on Ubuntu 10.4 on a Dell XPS M1730 (T7800, 4GB RAM)
How to solve this?
1. Quicktime does not work.
2. Image viewer does not work (blank images)
3. After a reset, I have to insert darwin.iso again
I have the same issues. Did you solve it?
Hello – Great guide (and also Taranfx) – I have made the installation with VMware 7 and the retail DVD – Now I am under 10.6.3 with no problems. Next step is to install the Iphone / Ipad development platform.
Thank you
thanks bob for the walkthrough, i got 10.6 installed on my vmware. now when playing a music, the sound gets choppy.. is it the sound driver? how do we fix this?
running i7 860 setting it to 1 processor-2 cores, and 4gb mem(i hav 8gb physically)
i installed snow L successfuly. The first time i installed it the network worked instantly, After i rebooted the network showed an auto ip address. I have tried everything to get it to get back on my network to no avail. What am i missing. it is set to dhcp, the vmware virtual network settings are correct. i dont know how to make this thing work again on the network. But as far as the os function, that it does. From the time i hit the power on to readiness is under a minute!!!! Better than windows 7 on boot!!!! all i need now is how to restore the network to full functionality.
I don’t know specifically what your problem might be, but I’d suggest you try refreshing your DHCP lease. Go to “System Preferences->Network->Advanced” and select “Renew DHCP Lease” and see if that has a happy ending. 🙂
and thank you for the helpful instructions.!!!! God send!!
i’ve tried that a few times and it didnt work. Im uninstalling vmware and then Im going to do it all over again. i looked up on the net about a maxxus amdpcnet driver. do you know if this driver work with 10.6? Thanks so much for your prompt and precise response
Sorry, I’ve never heard of the “maxxus amdpcnet driver”, so I’m probably not going to be of much help to you on this. Hopefully, somebody reading this will be able to chime in with some helpful insight.
A virtual CPU has entered the shutdown state. This would have caused a physical machine to restart. This can be caused by an incorrect configuration of the virtual machine, a bug in the operating system or a problem in the VMware Workstation software. Press OK to restart the virtual machine or Cancel to power off the virtual machine.
Got any ideas bob?
Off the top of my head, no, not really. Are you trying to do this on an AMD processor? If so, I’ve only ever done this on Intel machines, and I have heard that AMD might be an issue, and require some additional patches (or even a specific distribution of the 10.6 ISO).
Your problem is not your CPU settings or any configuraiton setting. You need to change your boot files. Follow the given link below, download iBootSupport and replace it with your Darwin.iso file. Your problem will definitely be solved.
Download Link for iBootSupport:
http://tonymacx86.blogspot.com/2010/05/iboot-supported-with-vanilla-kernel-for.html
btw it happens as soon as it loads the dvd. I’ll see the apple logo until I hit ok then it’ll reboot obviously.
I have an HP e9120y if that helps…?
Just wanted to add some information here. I follow these instructions to a T and it works fine on a Hewlett Packard HPE-170f.
nice work ! i install the Snow Leopard 10.6.3 on My Vmvare ,But for The DNG convert I used a MAc OS X 10.6.2 Vmvare image
For those of you who are stuck on “Please wait for DVD to load…” I never got the ISO to work. I made a dmg from a retail disk and converted it to an ISO. I actually had to install SL from the physical disk and it worked.
Excellent work!! Got it up and running…
Quick question.. Internet wont work at all.. Any ideas?
Im getting a no recorder found message within toast and SL 10.6.3 say’s “No Drives”. Ive tried editing the config file, and still no luck. The drive DOES work within build 10.4.8 but not snow leaopard (yet). any ideas?
help!
after rebooting Mac OS X, i get this message:
A virtual CPU has entered the shutdown state. This would have caused a physical machine to restart. This can be caused by an incorrect configuration of the virtual machine, a bug in the operating system or a problem in the VMware Workstation software. Press OK to restart the virtual machine or Cancel to power off the virtual machine.
Help
what should i do?
please reply
Your problem is not your CPU settings or any configuraiton setting. You need to change your boot files. Follow the given link below, download iBootSupport and replace it with your Darwin.iso file. Your problem will definitely be solved.
Download Link for iBootSupport:
http://tonymacx86.blogspot.com/2010/05/iboot-supported-with-vanilla-kernel-for.html
Yesterday I installed OSX w/o any problems and also restarted the virtual machine a few times. Today it won’t boot. “CPU has been disabled by guest operating system.”
Any ideas?…
I cant seem to download files in steps 3. and 4.
🙂
hey guys,
i did followed all the steps up to 9 but when I power on, i get the error message “operating system not found”
can anyone help me please?
Prat when you are in the vmware just make sure that your cd is connected with 10.6 iso mounted in the iso link. if its not there its not going to work.
Nice job! Just Finished doing this on my HP Pavilion dv6700CTO Laptop with Intel T7500 Centrino Duo Processor and it worked like a charm. Thank you for this post.
Nice guide to running OSX on VMWare! Pls keep it updated
For those with ASUS mobo having shutdown, sleep, audio problems check this thread and download latest ALC1200 kext. (see if your mobo is on the ‘tested ok’ list first)
http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=161430
Have managed to get SL 10.6 working with vm ware workstation. On problem i hav ehad is installing ilife09. Cant see anything in pages /keynote/numbers only sidebar and taskbar is visible the actual text window is blank. I can see the files in preview perfectly but not in the software..can anyone help
I have the same issue with iWorks. I also noticed that after I installed it, Safari and Chrome freeze on pages that have any Flash on them. Were you able to solve the iLife problem you were having with Keynote/Numbers?
I have now discovered the reason for this. iWorks, iLife and several other Apple applications require the QE/CI video support. VMWare currently does not support this.
Thanks for the wonderful tutorial. I got mine installed successfully. But I noticed that the performance is quite slow. Is this normal? Or is there something that I can do to make it faster?
Allocated RAM: 1GB
Processor: 1 (2 cores)
Performance is relative, of course. A task that takes 12hrs 30min to complete on my Intel-based 64-bit Mac mini 10.6.x takes only 9hrs under my “Snow Leopard” VMware image when the image is run on a 3.2GHz i7 machine under Windows Vista. (For the curious, the task is building Qt 4.7.0.)
Empirical evidence suggests that a VMware image will not run as fast as a stand-alone installation on dedicated hardware when that hardware is at least similar to the image host (the test between the Mac mini and the i7 machine is of course not an apples-to-apples comparison, no pun intended). So, if you run OS X on a pretty capable Mac, and then run the VMware image on a machine that is comparable (or not as powerful), then, yeah, your image will likely suffer from such performance comparisons.
Thanks for the reply! I’m planning on upgrading my system to a 8GB DDR2 RAM, WIll it help (macosx) if I give it a 4GB RAM? I’m just planning on using it as a way to develop iPhone apps…
Depends entirely upon what you plan to have the image do. If you’re not doing anything that taxes RAM, then adding more will have no impact.
While faster and more memory won’t hurt, I would think that an increase in raw computing power (for example, the i7) would give an image the greatest boost in performance.
However, again, YMMV. It depends entirely upon the purpose to which you put the image.
Thank you very much for your .vmx file.
Used iAtkos v7 Image with voodoo.iso and your .vmx on a AMD Phenom II X4 940 and ATI Radeon HD 3200.
Works like a charm with Mac OS X 10.5.7
Thanks so much for this, tried several distro’s without success, all is now working including the sound thanks to you bob. I can’t get drag and drop to work between win 7 and SL, can you explain how to get it to work, thanks again
Theoretically, the VMware Tools that are installed in the OS X VM should enable drag-and-drop. However, I’ve not been able to make it work, having had to resort to using FTP between the VM and my host (if somebody reading this has gotten drag-and-drop to work, please post your solution). I doubt the VMware Tools for Snow Leopard is actually sanctioned by VMware, so it might be a collision with some Apple-specific mechanism (like “Unity”) that is causing the grief.
However, I think a lack of drag-and-drop is a small price to pay for having network and sound. 🙂
Sorry, meant to say “some VMware-specific mechanism”. “Unity” is not Apple, it’s VMware. 😉
I think I had the same problem with Ubuntu and XP, no drag n drop, good good idea with ftp 😉 and great to have sound. This is a Dell 1564 5i M430 2.27GHz 64bit 4GB Ram Win7 Home, for anyone who needs to know, will it work. I used UltraISO to convert the DMG file to ISO as I couldn’t get dmg2iso working, the results made me think the file was corrupt.
I just updated from 10.6 to 10.6.4, cool…
Anyone know how to get internal webcam working, or have a link on how to enable it? Thanks bob for your quick reply, you saved me from returing this laptop to Dell. 😉
Hey bob,
Followed your awesome guide and OS X boots up fine, when setting it up in the VM though it asks what drive I would like to install it on, no options appear so I can’t go on any further. I think I need to create a partition but I don’t know how, any ideas?
Just enable the camera from inside the VM.That also works fine.
I get an error if I start the installation of Mac OS X
Screenshot: http://cl.ly/b8ee93bb187bbfd82981
Can anyone help me? E-Mail: floriankaiser9@gmail.com
I’m having the same problem as Flokass. Can anyone help me too?
Hi, thanks again bobhood. Had to format my PC & when I tried to run my VM image it would not work, had to read thru your tutorial again. This is a ver important step, don’t leave it out Steps 3 & 4 “Download darwin-wks7.zip and extract its single file, “darwin.iso”” thanks again
Anyone know how to get Time Machine and DVD software working, greatful for any help
Thanks bobhood
Good info. works like a charm. installed on a win7, intel core i3, hp laptop.
running VM 7
On windows 7 x64 using core i5 cpu
Have followed this tutorial but getting the following error:
‘A virtual cpu has entered the shutdown state…’
This was running using both -v and -v -x
Last two lines of debug output:
EFI returned runtime 0
Starting darwin/x86
“EFI” stands for “Enhanced Firmware Interface”. A zero return value usually indicates no error.
I’m using Windows 7 x64 with a 64-bit architecture Core 2 Quad (I’ve not been keeping up with Intel’s i3/i5/i7 re-branding nomenclature, so I don’t know how similar/dissimilar it might be to what I’m using), and it continues to work for me. The only thing that I could suggest is that you check your BIOS and make sure that “Virtualization” is enabled.
I thought that, but it is enabled in BIOS
and I can run Windows 7, server 2008, xp, Ubuntu and some others no problem.
So not too sure what the issue is
Hi,
I am trying to install Snow Leopard on VM7 / Windows 7 x64 i7. Virtualisation is enabled in the BIOS. AHCI as well.
I have the same shutdown state message, with the same last 2 lines (EFI + Starting Darwin).
Did you manage to make your install work? Would you have anything to recommend?
Thanks a lot in advance for your help,
Frederic
Thanks for the guide! I just did this on my i5 laptop (gateway nv79) and it works great. Upgraded to 10.6.4 via update manager no problem. Running xcode 3.latest + iphone sdk 4.1, happily building my haXe projects.
One thing bit me on the install, though: I made the initial virtual drive size too small (15gb). When I went to expand it later to install xcode (~8gb) diskutil wouldn’t allow me to enlarge the existing partition. I tried a variety of approaches but could never seem to make it happen. In the end, I just deleted the partition and reinstalled everything.
From what I can recall (I’ve not done this in a long time), VMware will not let you resize the primary disc once it is created. You can extend it, but the extended volume has to be treated a “unallocated disc space.”
So, for example, under Windows VMs, you would format it and give it a different drive designation (like “D:”). With VMs based on UN*X (like Linux and OS X), it becomes an extension that gets mounted on the file system at an inode.
From what I could gather, it was actually some snow leopard issue. Of course, I could be completely wrong. I’m pretty sure I’ve done this same operation w/ centos + vmware but it really doesn’t come up often enough for me to make a confident statement.
In hindsight, I probably could’ve just mounted the other partition at /Developer, but at the time I didn’t know what an installed xcode would look like.
At any rate, thanks again for pulling all the info together! Apple should thank you too. I didn’t see myself putting out the $600+ to tinker around with their platform. But now, if I make something worthwhile, I’ll definitely be buying apple hardware and joining the developer program.
Hi everybody,unfortunately the same message all the time…
Invalid front-side bus frequency 66000000 Hz.
Disabling the CPU …
I have already enabled VT in bios,copy paste text in step 6 etc…
Any help? thanks
I’ve done everything I was supposed to do and when I got to step 9, VMware decided to be gay and say “Operating system not found” instead of booting from the disk image like it was supposed to. The only thing I did different was I used dmg2img instead of dmg2iso (which won’t run on my 64-bit version of Windows 7). I have an Athlon 64 X2 processor with hardware virtualization.
How do I fix this problem?
For people having these problems:
a) “A Virtual CPU has entered the shutdown state.”
b) “CPU has been disabled by guest operating system.”
Try adding the following line to the .vmx file:
cpuid.1.eax = “0000:0000:0000:0001:0000:0110:1010:0101”
Solution credits:
http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/lofiversion/index.php/t232183.html
Many thanks for posting that, Ricardo! That problem has plagued people for a long time. Hopefully, this will put it to bed.
Unfortunately this doesn’t completely solve the problem, not for my anyway. Now and then I get a gray error box while booting the OS in a couple of different languages.
Normally this is temporarily solved by rebooting the HOST machine. But then it happens again. I think it might have something to do with suspend/hibernate (on Windows), but I’m not sure.
Also, my machine does a few strange sounds when I’m using Mac OS X in VMware, it doesn’t happen with any other OS. I’m afraid this could damage my laptop somehow, or no need to worry?
I also tried to updated to 10.6.5, but it didn’t work, I’ll reply below in the appropriate comment.
awesome fix…! saved my life and i’m back
Hi Ricardo,
I have problem “Invalid front-side bus frequency 66000000 Hz.” and tried to adding your line to the .vmx file. It worked, thanks
Saved my life. I was about to give up after reading http://communities.vmware.com/thread/318740 . God bless!
I upgraded to 10.6.5. It booted up fine inside VMware 7 but now I cant control the OS … how to override vmware tools ? I lost keyboard and mouse control inside that OS X now 😦
Regarding 10.6.5, I don’t have an answer for that at the moment. I’ve not personally upgraded from 10.6.4 yet, so I’ve not encountered your problem.
Did you make a snapshot before upgrading? If so, you can just roll back to it and recover your installation. If not, well, it is always good policy to make a snapshot of your current VM prior to upgrading the operating system just in case things go wonky. Every update to the operating system has the potential to damage the VM (as you’ve discovered). This is particularly true in the case of OS X: Apple has a history of, and a penchant for, ignoring backward compatibility in their software support.
When I get a chance, I’ll give the update a try and see what happens. Meanwhile, if you can’t recover your VM from a snapshot, at least you have the instructions on this page to re-install. 😉
After creating a snapshot, I performed a software update. Since there were other updates available other than 10.6.5, I applied all the other updates first and then rebooted to make sure none of them caused issues. No problems were found.
I then applied the 10.6.5 update. Although the update didn’t seem to require it, after it completed, I rebooted the VM. Once it was back up, I checked the “About This Mac” dialog, and it shows that 10.6.5 is indeed installed. I opened a terminal window, and can type into it without any noticeable glitches.
I appear to have full mouse and keyboard control with 10.6.5 installed. I’d recommend you start from scratch, re-install a fresh Snow Leopard, and then try the update to 10.6.5 again before you install any other software.
I’m also having this problem and worse. I didn’t have any other updates like you bobhood, I installed all of them before when I first installed Mac OS X and it was working fine.
I tried to update to 10.6.5 and as soon as it finished installing everything, the updated required me to restart, there was a dialog on the screen. However, just like SWTestuer, I couldn’t control the VM, no mouse and no keyboard, had to reset the VM.
After that I couldn’t boot the machine anymore, I got the error I described in my comment above (gray error box while booting). And a host reboot didn’t solve the problem this time, it never booted at all.
I did create a snapshot before the upgrade and restored that. But I was only able to boot the system after rebooting the host like I’ve been saying.
I don’t know if it’s relevant (I think it is, somehow) but I’m doing this on a Intel powered i3-330UM.
Why is your text dark grey on black? I had to turn off the page style since I couldn’t read it at all.
Can someone please help me i get the:
Invalid front-side bus frequency 66000000 Hz.
Disabling the CPU …
Thank you Bob Hood, VMware, and the other folks in the back room that made this possible… Thank you.
I came across this tutorial yesterday evening. By the time I went to bed I had OS X 10.6 installed and completely updated to 10.6.5 without issues. However, after installing Safari 5.x I get the ‘beach ball’ when connecting to Facebook.com and ESPN.com (naturally, Apple.com works). I didn’t have time this morning to investigate so i installed Opera (Apple.com download page) to check weather, facebook, etc.
Do you have any ideas/suggestions as to what can be done to get Safari working properly?
Again, many thanks to the team that made it possible to run MAC OS X on an Intel IC7 processor using HP hardware, Windows 7 64-bit and VMWare Workstation 7.
I tried to double the RAM with more numbers than I have physically but the program crashes with major error. I thought this was virtual i don’t understand why this happened. finally I use your settings by my network dont work. bridge nat or the other option. i think its because apple dont have my nic driver yet?? will try another format and reinstall but dont think this is going to work like you say…
just want to say thanks man.. ive tried so many different ways to get osx working on my i5 but none worked…was almost goin to give up when i stumbled upon yer little tutorial..
up and running smooth now..and was so easy compared to some of them!
cheers again man 🙂
Glad to help, Tommy. 🙂
Thank you very much for this guide.
I had to mix this one to another one to make it works. I think it depended on my hardware…
BTW, I’m still unable to activate sound, neither with your reccomended drivers, nor with different ones…
any suggestion?
🙂
How do I go about Updatating OSX with the Software Update within OSX? Trying to get the Mac App store that comes with the update. When I update the Mouse and keyboard stop woring forcing me to go to previous snapshot.
Thank!
I used the files and directions located here http://www.surreystore.com/Forums/tech-reviews/osx-on-windows-pc/
For everyone who is having issues with booting from the ISO. I created the ISO of both 10.6 Server and Client using magicdisc on a PC. It worked without a problem.
Just fantastic. Finished the procedure w/o a single hiccup! Now for the native installation 🙂
After having problems installing OS X in a VirtualBox VM, I went to VMware Workstation 7 and it worked great, especially after seeing some of the tips here. I’m now updated to 10.6.6 and only found myself frustrated at the lack of being able to use common Windows keyboard shortcuts in OS X, incorrectly assuming they might be universal. Some keyboard remapping for select applications resolved that to my satisfaction, so now I’m pressing along and learning more about how OS X works.
In the process, and being that I use Adobe products on my Windows 7 PC, I was interested in installing some Adobe trials for the Mac, first going with Photoshop CS5. That failed afer several attempts, so I then went with the Master Collection trial, but it too failed in the same manner.
Basically, after extracting the dmg file and then launching the installer, the ‘Initializing Installer’ process seems to complete per the progress bar reaching the end, and the dialog window closing, but nothing happens after that…at a time when I’d then expect to see the actual installation dialog window open.
Reviewing the PDApp.log, all lines shown are [INFO] lines, suggesting all is well, but there is a [WARN] entry among the last 7 lines as shown below.
[INFO] Setup – TimeLog: End initial checks
[INFO] Setup – TimeLog: Begin Installing
[INFO] Setup – TimeLog: End Installing. Now launching PDApp
[WARN] Setup – Size for ACF from PIM 33677
[INFO] Setup – TimeLog: PDApp launched. Waiting for PDApp window to come
[INFO] Setup – TimeLog: PDApp window came. Exiting
[INFO] Setup – Exiting Installer with Code: 0
I wondered if my installation disk was too small for the large, so I’ve already imaged it via Disk Utility to a new, fixed-size 64GB virtual disk where I’ve got about 46GB of free space remaining. But, the same error still occurs and I’m getting suspicious if there’s just something about a VM environment the Adobe installer just doesn’t like. I’ve seen others offering up VM images to download for an OS X guest that already has Photoshop installed, but I’d rather try and do this myself if possible.
So, has anyone here experienced and resolved a similar problem?
Thanks!
Justin
I have install the mac on inter PC . First time it run smoothly after restarting it gives me error “Operating System not found” Please help…….
Secondly what about sound in vmware it is supported or not
Zia, it sounds like you didn’t leave your darwin.iso disc image assiged for the CD, so the system would use it as the boot disc. Check for that. On the other hand, I have sometimes seen where the CD image is not detected, but a restart resolves that and things work fine.
As for sound, you probably need to install the Ensoniq sound drivers for the mac. Refer back to step 2 under “Part 2 – Adding the Icing” above.
If it shows no partitions you have to go to the top of the screen and go to Utilities -> Disk Utility and create a partition while in the installation.
I got this message when try install Mac OS X SL 10.6.1-10.6..2 “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’m using HP DV6000 series Notebook.
Processor : AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-56 1.8GHz
Haradware Virtualiztion is enabled in BIOS.
Host Operating Systems is : Windows 7 Professional
VMware Workstation 7.
I’ve searched diffrent forum for the solution.But al in vain.
Please give me a solution so that I can use Mac On my notebook.
I don’t know for sure, but I’m guessing it’s your AMD CPU that is the problem. If I’m not mistaken, OS X is only designed to run on Intel processors.
Mac OS X requires hardware virtualization. For those on AMD processors you are going to have a bit of trouble making it work even if you do have it because the kernel may not work properly on your processor.
I also try with virtualbox 4.04. In this case there is some dfference. My vmachine strat well in virtualbox. I’ve try to install with -v flags. Interesting thing is that Graphical user interface welcome screen appear to choose language. And whithin a few seconds it goes off and a blank screen shows. And later the virtual machine ower off automatically.
Sometime it shows panic kernel of voodoo.
As a result I’m also confused with
I don’t think it works in VirtualBox yet. They have done some work in emulating EFI which is key but there are other issues that need resolved as well.
I have this working with SL. Has anyone tried this method with Lion? I have seen posts on other sites that say the Lion boot media will not boot in a VM, unlike SL.
Thanks.
It works without any problems – 10.6.7 – two cores per cpu!
i keep getting 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 plz help.
Installed perfectly using VMWare Workstation 7.1
I can’t seem to be able to use the multiple monitor features though, it says my vmware tools for mac osx server 10.6 is out of date.
when i download darwin-wks7.zip, it says “Archive: /home/max/Downloads/darwin-wks7.zip
[/home/max/Downloads/darwin-wks7.zip]
End-of-central-directory signature not found. Either this file is not
a zipfile, or it constitutes one disk of a multi-part archive. In the
latter case the central directory and zipfile comment will be found on
the last disk(s) of this archive.
zipinfo: cannot find zipfile directory in one of /home/max/Downloads/darwin-wks7.zip or
/home/max/Downloads/darwin-wks7.zip.zip, and cannot find /home/max/Downloads/darwin-wks7.zip.ZIP, period.”
i’m running ubuntu 11.04, but that shouldn’t effect zip files.
InsanelyMac has a thread on doing a binary mod to VMWare Workstation/Player. This mod turns on all kinda of Mac OS X emulation stuff in VMWare Workstation and adds a Mac OS X 10.5/10.6 Server entry. Note that Audio isn’t in the hardware list but you can always add it.
Even on this setup Mac OS X requires hardware virtualization but the positive thing is that you do NOT have to manually create the vmx. You can create it from the gui. It also enables the emulated efi so Mac OS X installs more natively. Note I added “cpuid.1.eax” and “pciSound.playBuffer” myself. The first is a cpu mask so that 10.6.3 boots (kernel bug and fixed in 10.6.4 and newer) and second is trying to reduce the latency in the audio. Didn’t really work all that well and I’ll probably remove it. Getting ready to update to 10.6.7 so the first one will be removed as well.
As an example this is my working vmx file.
.encoding = “windows-1252”
config.version = “8”
virtualHW.version = “7”
numvcpus = “2”
cpuid.coresPerSocket = “2”
scsi0.present = “TRUE”
scsi0.virtualDev = “lsilogic”
memsize = “1024”
scsi0:0.present = “TRUE”
scsi0:0.fileName = “Mac OS X Server 10.6 64-bit.vmdk”
ide1:0.present = “TRUE”
ide1:0.fileName = “C:\Users\shinji\Downloads\Snow Leopard 10.6.3 retail\darwin312.iso”
ide1:0.deviceType = “cdrom-image”
floppy0.startConnected = “FALSE”
floppy0.fileName = “”
floppy0.autodetect = “TRUE”
ethernet0.present = “TRUE”
ethernet0.connectionType = “nat”
ethernet0.virtualDev = “e1000”
ethernet0.wakeOnPcktRcv = “FALSE”
ethernet0.addressType = “generated”
usb.present = “TRUE”
ehci.present = “TRUE”
pciBridge0.present = “TRUE”
pciBridge4.present = “TRUE”
pciBridge4.virtualDev = “pcieRootPort”
pciBridge4.functions = “8”
pciBridge5.present = “TRUE”
pciBridge5.virtualDev = “pcieRootPort”
pciBridge5.functions = “8”
pciBridge6.present = “TRUE”
pciBridge6.virtualDev = “pcieRootPort”
pciBridge6.functions = “8”
pciBridge7.present = “TRUE”
pciBridge7.virtualDev = “pcieRootPort”
pciBridge7.functions = “8”
vmci0.present = “TRUE”
smc.present = “TRUE”
ich7m.present = “TRUE”
firmware = “efi”
roamingVM.exitBehavior = “go”
displayName = “Mac OS X 10.6 64-bit”
guestOS = “darwin10-64”
nvram = “Mac OS X Server 10.6 64-bit.nvram”
virtualHW.productCompatibility = “hosted”
extendedConfigFile = “Mac OS X Server 10.6 64-bit.vmxf”
ethernet0.generatedAddress = “00:0c:29:fc:0d:31”
uuid.location = “56 4d 56 ec 65 7e 2a 68-80 13 8f c6 5f fc 0d 31”
uuid.bios = “56 4d 56 ec 65 7e 2a 68-80 13 8f c6 5f fc 0d 31”
cleanShutdown = “TRUE”
replay.supported = “FALSE”
replay.filename = “”
scsi0:0.redo = “”
pciBridge0.pciSlotNumber = “17”
pciBridge4.pciSlotNumber = “21”
pciBridge5.pciSlotNumber = “22”
pciBridge6.pciSlotNumber = “23”
pciBridge7.pciSlotNumber = “24”
scsi0.pciSlotNumber = “16”
usb.pciSlotNumber = “32”
ethernet0.pciSlotNumber = “33”
ehci.pciSlotNumber = “34”
vmci0.pciSlotNumber = “35”
vmotion.checkpointFBSize = “134217728”
usb:0.present = “TRUE”
usb:1.present = “TRUE”
ethernet0.generatedAddressOffset = “0”
vmci0.id = “1610353969”
usb:1.deviceType = “hub”
usb:0.deviceType = “mouse”
cpuid.1.eax = “0000:0000:0000:0001:0000:0110:1010:0101”
tools.syncTime = “TRUE”
isolation.tools.hgfs.disable = “FALSE”
sharedFolder.maxNum = “1”
usb.autoConnect.device0 = “”
sharedFolder0.present = “TRUE”
sharedFolder0.enabled = “TRUE”
sharedFolder0.readAccess = “TRUE”
sharedFolder0.hostPath = “C:\”
sharedFolder0.guestName = “Host_C”
sharedFolder0.expiration = “never”
sound.present = “TRUE”
sound.fileName = “-1”
sound.autodetect = “TRUE”
printers.enabled = “FALSE”
sound.pciSlotNumber = “36”
pciSound.playBuffer = “50”
svga.autodetect = “TRUE”
svga.vramSize = “134217728”
mks.enable3d = “TRUE”
usb.generic.autoconnect = “FALSE”
serial0.present = “FALSE”
hi Bob, thanks for the guide. the links provided to download darwin-wks7.zip and vmware-darwin-200.zip from the filedropper site keeps corrupting or interrupting the downloads. i will get an incomplete or corrupted download. i tried from three different connections where each are indeed good. Is there anyway to get these files from elsewhere?
I’ve created a Dropbox account, and placed these two files into a “public” folder. They should be available at any time as long as they are in there.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/29510717/darwin-wks7.zip
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/29510717/vmware-darwin-200.zip
(FYI: You should not have to create an account on Dropbox to access these links.)
hi – i am having install problems on my dell 2.7GHz Core i7-2620M. i’ve used the iboot.iso and the mac os install starts but i get not-sign after a few minutes. why do you think ? thanks for any help you can give
Hi,
I am trying to install Mac OSX 10.6.
I have installed the VMWare tools and defined the configuration according to the guide.
Before the installation starts, the system gives me the following error:
“Mac OSX cannot be installed on this computer.
If you want to restore your computer from a backup….”
I changed the partition format to all 3 types (GUID, Apple MBR)..but nothing helped.
Any help would be really appreciated.
I’m having the same exact problem, everything seems to work fine. I partitioned the disk and followed all steps to the letter.
but no luck, i got the exact same error as you
so sad. and searching the web has so far not been forthcoming with a solution
whoops. bad mac .iso, got a new one and it works just spiffy!
@Sean: Oh that’s an interesting observation.
Thanks for posting your findings here 🙂
Can you recommend where i can get a good mac.iso image ?
Seems that mine is also corrupted then.
I tried the install process on a Windows 7 Ultimate.
The installation of setup.cmd failed with “unable to load key file. Error opening key file tools-key.pen” (repeating 7 times in the log)
Thanks for the guide. Very easy to follow. I have one issue. I have everything set up and running just fine. The only problem I have is that Safari won’t respond when I try to go to youtube. It starts to load up, then just freezes. It does this for a few sites. I read through the above posts and didn’t see anyone else with this problem. I hope I didn’t skip over it. Thanks.
Happens to me too (OS X 10.6.5, Safari 5.0.5). It also locks up on me when I try to go to the Adobe Flash site (http://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about/) which has a Flash animation on the page. Using my Mac mini (OS X 10.6.7, Safari 5.0.5), YouTube.com and the Flash page also lock up, so it’s not the VM at fault. It’s probably Apple’s active (and stupid) campaign against Flash.
Thanks for the reply. I installed both firefox and google chrome. FireFox seemed to freeze up also, but google chrome hasn’t froze up yet.
Is it possible to dual boot with Mac OS X in vmware? Or do we always have to access vmware from Windows?
Hi Bob,
Great Post. I have some problems that I suppose you can Help me. I have an Alienware Aurora, 16 Gb of RAM, with Windows 7 ultimate. I have followed the steps you have suggested and there are some problems:
1) dmg2iso does not work in Windows 7 I have a XP virtual machine and it crashes too;
2) My machine virtualizes, no problem. I have VMWare version 7. When I try to start for the first time a new virtual machine, generated as you suggested, specifically when the darwin.iso starts I receive a message that the operating system has blocked the execution. So I cannot create a Snow Leopard Machine;
3) A friend succesfully generated a Virtual machine with iDeneb 10.5. I can run it in my Alienware with your darwin.iso (the setup.cmd install worked perfectly). The machine is running but with a 40gb hard disk. I have expanded with VmWare the disk, I could generate a Coriolis CD to expand my partition but I could find a way to boot from a CD.
My intention was to generate a Snow Leopard machine but for some reason my machine does not accept to run the darwin.iso when the machine initializes so I tried with a machine 10.5 generated by others. But this machine does not allows me boot frm CD.
Can you help me !!!
Thanks in advance
@mvbaffa
1) you are correct, dmg2iso doesn’t work in Win7 even in compability mode. I used UltraISO, been using for few years and works pretty much with anything you trow at it. I got a full version of pirate bay.
2) & 3) I dont fully understand. You don’t need the darwin.iso untill the installation of snow leopard has completed. OR if you meant vmware-darwin-200 distribution, that you install within win7 using command promp i.e run cmd, navigate to the directory “vmware-darwin-200” once in it, type ‘setup.cmd install’
hope this helps
Hi Bob,
It is working now. My problem was that my chipset, Sandy Bridge, is new and I had to run a procedure unlock a specific version of VMWare. With this specific build of VMWare 7.1.3, the unlock process and your setup it worked. I do not have now, I am at work, the exact address of the thread that suggested the unlock process but as soon as I get home I will post it.
Just one problem I could Upgrade to version 10.6.7 but the Chrome is not woking OK for videos. When I show an youtube movie the window becames transparent and we can see behind it and safari is crashing even after the update.
Thanks Bob, you are the man.
Next stop: Apple Certified Support Professional (ACSP) 10.6
Thanks
Have had this setup and working for quite a while.
Went to do the latest Software Update to 10.6.8.
Towards the end of the update (this is the ONLY update being applied at this time), I get the message “The CPU has been disabled by the guest operating system.”
Have re-booted and re-tried a few times with the same result.
Any ideas anyone?
Thanks!
I had the same issue but after restarting the Host OS (Win7), all was good,
This worked a treat, thank you!
Great! It works perfectly! great job and great tutorial!
Bob you rock man!!!!!!
I don’t know what is going on with this, I get to the grey Apple screen, the desktop tries to load and it just hangs forever at this screen, any idea why?
Win7, 64bit, hardware virtualization on an intel i5, vmware workstation 7.1.4 build-385536
Thanks!
Nevermind, it was due to a bad iso file for OSx. The search for “retail Mac OS X Snow Leopard” got me the proper iso on PB and then I just mount it as a virtual cd rom with virtual clonedrive freeware software, that is awesome
Great tutorial =) Everything worked perfectly. I’m running two monitors, one with Win7 and the other for VMWare. However, Mac seems to freeze up after a while of inactivity, is there a way to prevent this?
Thanks heaps for the how to! any ideas on how to get video playing
Wow that was odd. I just wrote an extremely long comment but after I clicked submit my comment didn’t appear. Grrrr… well I’m not writing all that over again. Anyhow, just wanted to say excellent blog!
I tried to simulate the installation on my 32bit AMD Vista VMware 8 using your instruction, but with EmpireEFI4AMD.iso. It boots up correctly and asked to change the mac install DVD, which I went to the CD/DVD settings and change from EmpireEFI4AMD.iso to Mac OS X 10.6 install DVD, as it attempts to continue, a dialog box popped up “The CPU has been disabled by the guest operating system. Power off or reset the virtual machine”
Did I do anything wrong or missing anything in the process? Please help. Thx.
Hi Andrie, don`t know if you still need help, but it seems that it may be that hardware virtualisation may not be enabled in your computers bios settings. Have a look and see. Are you trying to install SL off the SL 10.6.0 dvd? If so, is it the 10a432 version?
Its the best one for AMD cpu`s, and I found it to be successful on my Phenom 2. Also try the snow_leopard_legacy iso, rather than the EFI.
The vmware snow leopard 10.6 (experimental) image may be helpful in the initial setting up.
Hi – I’ve had 10.6.3 running for a few months now, but I have a problem with the cursor not being released at window’s edge. Instead of releasing it bounces back to the center of the window. I’m running Win 7 U 64bit on a large monitor (one of 4 monitors). It’s not impossible to use, I can Ctrl-alt-del out but it used to work until some MacOS update. I’ve searched the web for solutions and nothing so far, any thoughts would be appreciated.
I should have mentioned this is on Workstation 8.0.1 now.
Thats on VM Worksation 8.0.1 btw
works great…but i need the Snow Leopard User password…thanks
resolved…thanks
Hi,
Followed ur suggested steps all went fine but during installation disk utility does not detect virtual HD (30 GB) it only shows disk 1 under this there is Mac osx base system of 1.36 GB. can not proceed further with the installation plz help.
என்னால் இதை செய்ய இயலவில்லை.தயவு கூர்ந்து எனக்கு உதவி செய்யுங்கள்.இப்படிக்கு அருண்…..
Please email me details on how to get ride of message “operating system not found” and also how to get rid of the dvd option as its not booting from my virtual drive that i mounted the iso onto from power iso. thanks.
Great article!!! I’m definitely looking forward to seeing more posts!
Will it work on Snow Leopard?
I am not sure where you are getting your info, but great topic.
I needs to spend some time learning more or understanding
more. Thanks for great information I was looking for this info for my mission.
Your way of describing everything in this post is actually good, every one
can easily be aware of it, Thanks a lot.
Greetings from California! I’m bored at work so I decided to check out your website on my iphone during lunch break. I enjoy the information you provide here and can’t wait
to take a look when I get home. I’m shocked at how fast your blog loaded on my phone .. I’m not even
using WIFI, just 3G .. Anyways, very good site!
I installed Mac OSX on my AMD processor and I pooped my pants. What a mess.