Download Mac OS X 10.7 Lion VMware Image for Windows 10/8.1 Computer

This guide is part of our Mac on Windows series. In this article, we will talk about working pre-installed VMware image of Mac OS X Lion 10.7.3. This VMDK file will work on most of the Intel-based desktop or laptop computers with Windows 10/8.1 or Windows 7. Software update to the latest version of Lion OS X is possible.

This pre-installed image was created and uploaded by ZackehSoul. Though he used to be active for while, now we can’t find any trace of him. But the torrent file or the pre-installed image links are available on the internet.

We earlier published a guide about the fresh installation of Lion OS X on VMware, if you prefer to install the OS from scratch, you can try this method. This Mac OS X Lion 10.7.3 pre-installed VMDK VMware image can be downloaded either from a torrent or direct file hosting site. I’m giving the exact download links (as requested by owner) which will open after showing ads. Please note that these methods are only for testing purpose.

Direct download links

How to Use Lion OS X 10.7 VMware Image on Windows 10

1) The download is having a set of required files with VMware disk (VMDK) and configuration (VMX) files. It is compressed by the 7-zip utility and in exe file format. In case, your Windows OS is not extracting the file, you can download the 7-zip utility from the official site here.

Make sure that the destination is having enough disk space to extract the files and use the VM in future.

Extract the macOS 10.7. VMware image

2) We have to unlock the VMware workstation program to host Mac OS X as a guest virtual machine. We need to use ‘VMware unlocker’ for this purpose.

The same download folder is having VMware unlockers for several versions. Incase these patches do not work for the version you have or you want to know more about how to unlock VMware workstation, read this guide about VMware Unlocker on Windows

Once the patch is applied successfully, do check whether ‘Apple Mac OS X’ OS type is appearing under guest Operating Systems.

3) Also, your physical computer must have VT  supported processor and it should be enabled on motherboard BIOS.

Read our guide about enabling and checking VT on Intel or AMD computers

If your physical computer is pretty old and not having VT support, then there is a patch available to bypass VT check. So, VMware will not check the VT support for guest Operating systems. You will find VMware Unlocker – Hardware Virtualization Bypasser in this download. Mostly you will not need to use the bypasser since most of the recent computers have the virtualization supported processor.

4) Now open the pre-configured virtual machine file.

Go to ‘File’ on the menu and select Open, browse the Mac OS X Lion.vmx.

You can modify the virtual machine settings before power it on. Increase the number of processors and RAM size based on your physical computer capacity. I increased to two processors and 2GB of RAM. (I did this demonstration in 2012 🙂 )

Lion OS X VM settings

5) Power on the virtual machine. If all steps are correct (specifically step 2 and 3), you should be seeing the working Lion OS on VMware with your Windows 10 computer.

first boot screen

Screen Resolution and Display Improvement

I do not understand the exact reason why the VMware tools is not installed on this image. Anyhow, the darwin.iso file is included in this download. We can use this file to install VMware tools inside the Lion OS X guest machine to get multiple display resolutions and better performance.

I recommend taking a snapshot before proceeding further steps.

Attach the darwin.iso file to CD/DVD drive of working virtual machine. The darwin.iso file is located under VMware Unlocker – Mac OS X Guest\VMware 8.x Series\Tools in extracted location.

mount darwin file to VM

Once it is mounted inside guest OS automatically, execute the ‘install VMware tools’ file.

It will ask for the password, the ‘Lion user’ password is nothing (blank password).

Install Vmware tools

Restart the virtual machine once the installation completed. After reboot, you must be seeing the full/larger screen and several display screen resolutions.

Screen resolutions in Lion OS on VMware

Sound and Network

The sound and network worked out of the box, no additional settings required.

VMware Shared Folder

After the VMware tools installation, we can set up the VMware shared folders to share data between host and guest OS.

Steps are very similar to earlier Mac OS X guests, check our earlier guide.

Note: This guide was originally published and linked to the owner’s site who created the pre-installed Lion OS VMware image torrent file. Since his website is not active anymore, you need to source for the image somewhere. Make sure you download it from reliable sources. Any pre-installed macOS image will have this identical steps to use on Windows 10 host computer.

If any of the above solutions did not fix the Windows PC issues, we recommend downloading the below PC repair tool to identify and solve any PC Issues.

Dinesh is the founder of Sysprobs and written more than 400 articles. Enthusiast in Microsoft and cloud technologies with more than 15 years of IT experience.

99 thoughts on “Download Mac OS X 10.7 Lion VMware Image for Windows 10/8.1 Computer”

  1. First off I would really like to give my thanks for all your work in providing such a great easy to understand guide of accomplishing this task but I do have a question is it possible to change the hard drive set up? I would like to set it up at a much smaller size and to store it as a single file not multiple files but i am unable to get rid of the 250 GB harddrive without removing the operating system i would really appreciate any help i can get sorry if this is an amateur question i’m new to this virtual machine world
    Thanks again,
    Colton

  2. hi,

    i want to build a hackintosh, but i don’t have any mac or access to one. so i can’t go to mac app store to buy lion. i have windows. can i use ur vm to access the mac app store and buy lion?

    Thank You

      • i don’t think apple sells it like that. and when the lion usb stick was available it cost 70 vs 30 online.

        • im sure it did with orther versions of osx so i think it will be the same with mountain lion and not a usb stick but a dvd it costas around 30 and for 30$ you can get a usb dvd drive if you need with usb

          • i checked the nearest apple store and was told that it is available only thru’ the mac appstore.

  3. Hi there, thanks for the great description of setting up Lion in VMware. I have set-up Workstation 8 with Lion and everything works great! No problems at all, except I can’t get 2 displays working.
    My set-up is a Windows Ultimate, Gigabyte Z68MA-D2H-B-3,CPU i5-2500, Graphic card Saphire HD6850,Vertex 3 250 Gb and Memory Corsair Vengeance 8Gb.
    Any ideas how to set-up 2 displays?

    Thanks, Peter

  4. Anyone had luck getting this run on on an x64 machine running VMware Workstation 8? I keep getting “CPU disabled by guest OS”

  5. Hi,
    First Thank You for your awesome help. I did all the steps as you explained however when i try to run vmware image it remains on apple logo and nothing happen even after long time. CPU performance also is low. Could u help me???

  6. to bad no Quartz (Extreme) Support 🙁 which is needed for almost all usefull MAC apps 🙁
    but anyway this guide was well written

    thanks,

    Artic

  7. Running VMware player 5…..have leopard and snow leopard working.
    Lion stuck at grey apple screen… Any ideas? Don’t want to use workstation.
    Thanks

    • Just run this:
      D:\Mac OS X Lion 10.7.3 VMware Image\VMware Unlocker – Mac OS X Guest\VMware 8.x Series\VMware Workstation Unlocker – Windows\install.cmd
      before starting vmware player , or similar depends on where you extracted downloaded image.

    • Did u enabled VT in BIOS. please check… as well as try to run the VMware workstation unlocker under Administrator privileges.

      Hope this will help…

      Regards

      Magesh K
      twitter.com/mageshmagi

    • Finally i have solved all the problems… Thanks to the boss who shared this…

      Regards

      Magesh K
      twitter.com/mageshmagi

  8. It don’t work for me.I tried it many times but don’t get success. please help me.I have Hp laptop with latest bios and i5 processor.
    Help me please.

    • Hello,

      Sorry to hear that nothing worked for you. U can try obtaining the latest version of Vmware( 9 ) and follow above procedure carefully. 100% it’ll work. Even i have the same processor and it worked for me…

      Best of luck..

      Magesh K
      twitter.com/mageshmagi

  9. Hi,

    I am getting the same problem on a x64 pc, grey Apple screen comes up and does nothing then changes after a while to the stop sign. your software looks awesome but would seriousely like some help to get over this issue.

    thankyou 🙂

  10. finally done it, installed on my Acer PC, top work guys internet works fine, sound not the best but not too worried about that.

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