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See my updated post:  "How to Install Mac OS Snow Leopard in VMWare - Better Way!"

I found a great write-up at ihackintosh.com on how to install Mac OS Snow Leopard on a Windows VMWare Workstation. When I find the ones that work well, I like to include them in my blog and make some changes and/or recommendations that I found useful. As Vinay states on the ihackintosh site:

"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."

Requirements:

Mac OS X version 10.6.3 Snow Leopard
Windows (XP, Vista, 7),
VMWare 7.x Workstation,
Intel based, multi-core computer,
Snow Leopard VMDX and dariwn_snow.iso from one of these links:(Rapidshare1, Rapidshare2, MediaFire, Megaupload).

Instructions:

  1. Open VMWare and load the.vmx file that came in the above download,
  2. Edit the machine settings to the below configurations:
    • CD/DVD = "Use ISO image file": assign the dariwn_snow.iso from the package,
    • CPU = at least 1 CPU and 2 cores (I assigned 2 CPU's and 4 cores),
    • Memory = at least 2GB,
  3. Power on the VM and as soon as you can control it, start pressing the "F8" key rapidly. If you see anything other then a short boot menu, you went too far, restart the VM,
  4. At this point you need to edit the VMWare DVD settings. Un-mount the ISO and assign the physical DVD drive to the VM. Insert your Snow Leopard DVD into the DVD drive,
  5. Press "C" to boot to the DVD and press F8 immediately for options. Type "-v" at the prompt. Now wait, this may take a few minutes,
  6. When the "Welcome" screen appears, choose your country and click "Continue". On the next screen you will notice that you now have options at the top of your screen. Click on "Utilities" and then "Disk Utility...". You will see the VM hard drive that you will install Leopard on. Select the drive, label the drive as you desire, and click the erase button. Save and close utilities,
  7. As you continue with the setup watch for the customization button to appear (lower left). When it does, click "Customization". De-select Printer Drivers and Language Translations. I skipped this step at first and had problems. I also decided to add some things and had problems. I recommend leaving all selections as they are other then un-checking these two,
  8. Once the installation is done the machine will reboot. When the machine fails to shut off cleanly, or to reboot, or you get some error messages about your CPU changing or whatever, don't worry, just do a hard power off of the VMWare machine,
  9. Once again, edit your DVD settings so the you are again booting to the dariwn_snow.iso file, save, and power the VM back on,
  10. Again, as soon as you can, start pressing the "F8" key until you see the boot menu,
  11. This time choose "h" to boot to the first hard disk. You should not be booting into Mac OS X.

Issues:

  • If you experience very long delays in booting up, you may have to hard reboot the machine. I found this to be the case in about one out of five start ups.
  • When you shut down or restart the VM it will not shut down clean and you will get an error message. At this point don't worry, just power off the machine and reboot as normal.

Tweaks:

* Take a snapshot of your VM machine before tweaks*
  1. CD/DVD Drive: Add another CD/DVD device in the VM configuration and assign your physical drive to it. This will allow you access your DVD drive without the need to un-mount and re-mount.
  2. Adjust the Resolution: Again thanks to ihackintosh.com for this: Find the 
  3. "/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist" file.
    • Move the file to another location and add the below two lines just above the </dict>:
    <key>Graphics Mode</key>     
    <string>1280x1024x32</string>
    
    • You should replace the 1280x1024 with whatever resolution you want and is supported by your display.
    • Save the file, move it back to the original location replacing the original file, and reboot.
  4. Audio: find the EnsoniqAudioPCI.mpkg.tar.gz file that you downloaded earlier. Copy that file as it is to your VM and launch it. Select both options and after a reboot your sound should work.

Software Installation:

At this point your box should function nicely. I was able to successfully install just about anything that I had. Good Luck!

*note: I am not an expert in Mac OS or VMWare. I am learning, just like many of you. I probably cannot answer your technical questions.

user Posted by Mike Wright

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1 comments

  1. Anonymous  

    Thanks! Nice Tutorial. Installed on VMWare with 8GB of Ram and 200GB of HDD Space. My real specs are:

    i7 2600k
    16GB Ram
    120GB SSD
    1TB HDD

    Keep it up!

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