Install Snow Leopard 10.6.5 in VMware Workstation 7

[Black Apple]

There are a bunch of other methods out there for installing Snow Leopard in a VMWare virtual machine, I’m sure of it, but I found this method to work for me and work quite well.

 

 

 

This method isn’t a replacement for OSX running on Intel hardware, if you want a Mac you should buy a real one, running on real hardware. Not everything works in a Virtual Mac and you will from time to time encounter strange occurrences along the way.

 

With that out of the way… Lets get started.

 

Here’s what’s required:

 

1. VMWare Workstation 7 or VMWare Player

 

2. Your Retail OSX Snow Leopard DVD or iso if you want to convert your DVD to ISO

 

3. Download Mac VMX files and others. (See below for link)

 

4. You’ll also need physical hardware that supports hardware virtualization. These are the specs for the hardware I used:

 

Intel Core i7 2.66Ghz Processor – 8GB Ram – 64bit Windows 7 Professional

 

5. A Few hours of your life otherwise spent fishing or getting drunk or both!

 

Now that you have all of your pre-requisites, let’s get to the fun part.

 

1. Make sure you enable hardware virtualization in your bios. the setting varies from each manufacturers bios but you can consult the documentation that came with your system if you arent sure how to do this.

 

2. Extract the files you downloaded earlier to a location that is easy to remember on your hard drive. c:\Virtual Machines is a good place if you can’t think of one.

 

3. Start VMWare workstation and click File –> Open and browse to the directory you exctracted the above files to:

 

Look for the following:

 

 

4. You can keep the default settings or change them if you wish. I changed mine to give it more memory. I gave it 4GB of ram and left the CPU count alone.

 

 

5. You will need to change the option for CD/DVD drive so that it uses the “darwin_snow.iso” file.

 

Select CD/DVD (IDE) and then change the setting to “Use ISO image file:”

 

Browse to the location of the darwin_snow.iso file and then click Ok

 

6. Start up your new virtual machine. (Make sure you have your Retail Snow Leopard DVD ready). As the VM starts up click inside the console (black startup screen) to capture your mouse and keyboard input and then hit the “F8″ key.

 

7. You should get to a screen that looks like this:

 

 

This is where you insert your Retail Leopard DVD, change your CD/DVD Drive to use the physical drive and then start your installation.

 

8. Insert your Retail DVD of Snow Leopard, right-click on Mac OS X Server 10.6 (experimental) in your sidebar and click settings, change your CD/DVD settings to use the physical drive of your computer then click OK

 

 

9. Go back to step 7 and select option “C” to boot from DVD

 

10. You should see OSX booting up like the picture below

 

 

11. From here you can continue the installation by following the prompts. You can also customize the install by removing the unnecessary language and printer files.

 

Make sure to format (Erase) your 40gb drive as “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)”

 

12. Give it a good 45 minutes or more for the installation to complete. At the end of the installation you might get an error message:

 

Go and power off your freshly installed VM, don’t reboot.

 

Look for the file you Opened in step 3. Mac OS X Server 10.6 (experimental).vmx, open it with notepad or wordpad and edit the line:

 

smc.present = “TRUE” and change it to smc.present = “FALSE”

 

Save the .vmx file and restart your virtual machine

 

 

That’s it! You should now have a full running version of Snow Leopard in a VMWare Workstation Environment.

 

If you’re interested in post install configs such as getting vmware tools installed to enable shared folders and different video resolutions as well as sound, let me know and I’ll post an update.

 

For now, go geek out with your virtualized Snow Leopard!

 

Link to necessary files: http://www.mediafire.com/?dhbxnndmznw

[techbuzzerguy]

I have successfully installed 10.6.0 in VMware on my windows 7 64 bit laptop using darwin image and 10.6.0 retail DVD

I want to upgrade dis to 10.6.4 or later. When i try to update it it gets hanged halfway during download and the system doesnt start again.

What should i do to update the os?

 

Please help