After several days of attempts and findings, finally, I managed to install Mac OS X Snow Leopard on VirtualBox with my Windows OS PC. We are going to use the original OS medium for this installation purpose. That will give the freedom to have the vanilla kernel and possible software updates from the official Apple website.
This method is completely for testing and learning purposes. Please buy the original Mac OS and Apple hardware. From version 3.2, the Oracle VirtualBox officially supports Mac OS X as the guest virtual machine on Apple hardware. So, technically you can virtualize macOS on Apple devices only. But still, we can do some workarounds to install Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware with different bootloaders on Windows computers.
Note: This post was originally published in the year 2010. You may find the older version of products on the screenshots. But still, these methods are applicable for the latest version including Windows 10 and VirtualBox 6 x. But there will not be many valid reasons to try an older version of Mac OS 10.6 when we have macOS 11.0 Big Sur now. If you are a developer who wants to test several older versions of macOS, then you can try these methods.
Requirements
- Oracle VirtualBox
- Mac OS X 10. 6 Snow Leopard Retail DVD or ISO (You may need to search for ISO on the Internet)
- EmpireEFIv1085.iso for Intel Processors (This is the boot loader we will be using to boot Mac OS DVD/ISO, download the correct version here)
- Hardware VT Checker (Read more here and make sure Hardware Virtualization is enabled on the host computer BIOS)
- Sound driver (Mentioned under sound)
Installation Steps of Mac OS X 10.6 on VirtualBox
1) Create a Mac OS X Virtual Machine with the following configuration (If you have the latest VB, then select Mac Server version)
Memory – Minimum 1GB
Processor Cores – 1 or more (Change it to one core if you face any issues. Two cores worked for me)
Enable PAE/NX, VT-x,
Nesting Page – Enabled
Enable IO APIC and Enable Absolute pointing device.
Remove Enable EFI. Built-in EFI loader may work with Apple hardware only.
Enable 3D Acceleration under the display and set up maximum video memory.
Storage Controller type ICH6 and create a 20 GB Hard disk.
2) Mount empireEFIv1085.iso to CD drive. Make CD ROM the first bootable device. Keep your Snow Leopard DVD or ISO file ready.
3) Start the virtual machine. When the following screen appears, eject bootloader ISO and load Mac installation DVD or ISO.
To do it, right-click on CD drive and select drive or ISO image. Wait for a while and press F5 then ENTER key when DVD loaded.
4) Wait for some time. If you see the installation screen, you are almost done. Go through the installation process.
Go to disk utility and create a partition if you can’t see the installation disk.
5) I got the following warning message at the end of the installation. It’s not an issue, just restart the Virtual machine.
Note – Shutdown or Restart will not happen normally, you have to do it manually from the VirtualBox console. You have to load the empireEFI ISO again to boot the OS from the installed hard disk.
6) This time, select Mac OS hard disk by right arrow key and press Enter to boot. I’m sure after several initial configurations you will land on the Snow Leopard desktop successfully.
Let’s Fix Some Issues on Snow Leopard Virtual Machine
1) Network worked straight away. NAT and Bridged type worked without any patches.
2) Software Update: Yes, it worked. Since we used the vanilla kernel, this VM can be updated. I managed to update till 10.6.4.
3) USB Support: It worked well. Somehow data transfer is slow but manageable. It detected my USB hard disk and flash drive.
4) The sound in Mac OS X Guest: Sound is a little issue here but worked. I’m sure it will not bother you much.
Follow these steps to install sound drivers. For me it worked, one side speaker worked with little distraction. Something is better than nothing. You need to follow this guide to install sound drivers.
5) Screen Resolution and Screen Size: Follow these steps to adjust the screen size. Widescreen size didn’t work for some users.
6) Shutdown and Restart: We can’t shut down or restart Mac VM in a normal way. You may see the messages ‘CPU halted’ (for Shutdown) or ‘MACH Reboot’ (for restart), this means nothing will happen after it. We need to power off or reset the virtual machine from the VirtualBox console. Here is the working Snow Leopard on VirtualBox.
7) Update 1
Install Boot Loader permanently and some fixes
To avoid attaching empireEFI ISO every time to boot OS X virtual machine, we can install bootloader permanently on Mac hard disk. This method will install the Chameleon bootloader and some other drivers.
Go to Empire EFI CD which is already mounted and open the Post Installation folder. Take a snapshot before doing anything at this point. Run myHack Installer Package.
Select Customize in Installation Type.
Read each package description and select it if you need it for your computer hardware. I recommend not deselecting anything selected by default. Press the Install button to continue.
After successful installation, remove empireEFI ISO and start the virtual machine, it should boot from the hard disk as shown below.
If this doesn’t work, restore the virtual machine to the latest snapshot and install the Chameleon bootloader from a separate installation file in the Post Installation folder. This might fix the boot loader issue and improve performance.
8) Some fixes for booting issues
a) Mac DVD reading error – EBIOS read error: Error 0×0c Block 0×1ed48a Sectors 0
This is due to accessing data from a Mac retail DVD. Convert the DVD with some cloning software to ISO. Most people faced this issue and that was the solution.
b) Booting errors after installation.
Try Boot verbose or Boot Ignore Caches options. In the empireEFI bootloader, go to Mac disk by pressing the right arrow key. Once it’s selected, press the down arrow key which will bring more options. Select and press Enter.
c) Change boot loader for old type of processors: Select legacyempire_efi1085.iso, which is inside the same folder.
If this bootloader and method didn’t work on the Intel processor then try this method with a different iboot loader.
I hope these methods will be helpful to install the original Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard on Oracle VirtualBox with your Windows 10 or 8.1 computer. I mentioned a few troubleshooting steps which may be helpful as well.
425 Comments
Thanks so much for the tutorial. Was up and running 10.6.3 under Win 7 64 in 10 minutes or so after reading everything.
Here is a shot of Win 7 64 running a 10.6.3 VB. It’s fast and it works great!!
Running under Win 7
http://i26.tinypic.com/2z5vsd0.jpg
VB Specs
http://i25.tinypic.com/sfzeyu.jpg
Thanks again, never could have done this without your help.
D
@rajiv,
what type of processor you are having and finally with which boot loader you managed to install? I think something is wrong with the boot loader. Try with – v and -legacy keys during the boot up and see the message. It will give an idea about issue.
@shadowseal45,
Again it can be a problem with boot loader you are using. Try yo reduce RAM size and number of processor cores for Virtual machine. Try with -legacy key.
@Kevin,
Some times original installation DVDs do not work with Windows VirtualBox. I suggest to convert it to ISO by following method,
https://sysprobs.com/convert-mac-dmg-iso-windows
Or, you may have to download the ISO file.
@how to make your mac faster,
I did not try, but it should not be a problem with pre-Intel Macs.
@Dave,
That’s cool. Thanks for sharing screenshots, which will give confident to other visitors for this post ( especially on AMD processor)
On the
“EBIOS read error: Error 0×0c
Block 0×1ed48a Sectors 0”
The following worked for me…. create an ISO image of your Snow Leopard DVD on your hard-drive and install from this image instead of your DVD.
Same here, got the EBIOS read error when I used a physical DVD. Creating an image (I used InfraRecorderPortable) worked fine.
Excuse me sir, but how do I mount .dmg image of Mac OS X into the virtual box?
@nigga,
Check this post,
https://sysprobs.com/mount-dmg-files-virtualbox-windows-host
Well, I’ve converted .dmg to .iso, launched EmpireEF, release it and mounted Mac OS X .iso into VB but nothings happens. It says “Failed to find boot signature on BIOS device e0h”. Any ideeas?
Many Thanks for all the info – i have successfully loaded OS X 10.6.3 from a purchased OS X disk (used imgburn to create a disk image for the install) on Virtual Box 3.2.6. And the Empire Legacy iso as well.
Early days so not sure about screen res and sound yet.
Also have used the Combo update to go to 10.6.4 – all ok.
PS – this is on my vmware test lab notebook, a ASUS G51JX i720 with 12GB RAM, awesome.
I’m using the OS X Installation DVD 10.6 and it boots fine, but when it comes to the point “Select the disk where you want to install Mac OS X” the dialog box is empty, so I cannot choose any drive. Of course a HDD is configured, 30 GB with ICH6 Controller. Any suggestions?
I’m sorry, too stupid – I have to partition the untouched HDD image first with the harddisk-tool.
Hey, ok so i’ve looked literally everywhere, every tutorial, googles continuously for about three days and i can’t find anything about the issue i’m having. I can boot the disc but when its loading (used verbose boot to see where i was getting stuck) i end up getting stuck at:
USBF: 9 .371 AppleUSBOHCI [ox29x9800] : : CheckSleepCapability – controller will be unloaded across sleep.
Ok so for random reasons i sometimes get past this issue but then the message CPU Halted appears on the verbose list and virtualbox closes.
Anybody no what the hell i need to do to fix this?
Thanks Sanchez
@Sanchez, give some more details about processor and how attaching virtual disk ( IDE or SATA).
Lets try to solve.
Oh and just a quick side note, when trying to use the method in this tutorial i’m unable to eject the empireEFI iso to insert the OS X iso. Any thoughts?
Cheers again
Sanchez
hey there.
Got it to install perfectly. However the video drivers seem exceptionally slow 🙁
e.g. mouse movement, window dragging etc.
Also all attempts to go into “about this mac” result in finder reloading
Help is appreciated 😀
@DD_nvidia, in fact we are running this without any video drivers.
Increase RAM size for Virtual machine
Enable 3 D and maximize video memory under display for VM.
Good luck.
Works great but I would install a much larger partition to start like 50-100GB I ran out of room right away and then tried to clone the drive and make it larger and that took longer than the original install and didn’t work because I cloned it after making a snapshot.
after install bootloader
each bootstrap it
run ok for same minute then display me:
You need to restart your computer. Hold the Power button for several seconds
(kernel painc)
I have addedd graphicsenabler
How can remove?
What i do?
@cap,
If it worked well before installing bootloader, then problem with bootloader. I’m hoping you will have snapshot, restore it and use.
Hi,
I am getting the memory allocation error after mounting the iso file. I have reduced the memory allocated but no luck.
I have followed the exact steps provided in this article.
How do you run it with -legacy option? Any help will be appreciated.
You raise quite a few quite useful points. Worth a read. I’ve sent your website through to friends
@Nik,
What type of processor your host computer got?
After mounting DVD or ISO file, do not press enter.
Press – key, at the left bottom this will appear and there you can pass startup commands.
-v or -legacy (without space) will give some ideas on errors.
Try and let me know.
Whoever has this error:
“EBIOS read error: Error 0×0c
Block 0×1ed48a Sectors 0″
To fix it: in VirtualBox go to the settings on your MAC VM and click on storage. Then select Host drive in CD/DVD device and check “Passthrough”. Then just do the steps again – should work fine.
This worked for me in VirtualBox 3.2.8
@Vitaliy,
If this solves others’ same problem, then you are a star.
Thanks for sharing.
Hi, i try to install Mac OS X like a virtual machine into a windows 7 ultimate system. Everything ok till i start the virtual machine , i have the error : FATAL : No bootable medium found ! System halted.
I create a CD from the ISO indicated but … The .zip contains two ISO : EmpireEFI4AMD.iso and _EmpireEFI4AMD.Iso. I use to create the CD only the first, it’s correct ?
Thanks for your answer.
I followed the tutorial, the empire iso booted up fine but when I go to boot snow leopard I either get a blank screen or a gray background with the apple logo in the middle. I walked away from the comp for a while and came back to see if it was just taking a long time to get started, but nothing seems to be happening. Any suggestions?
I need this for an iPhone SDK programming class that I’m already behind in (it started last week but luckily this professor is pretty lenient about late work) so any help would REALLY be appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
An added note: I know there are some Objective C compilers for Windows but is there anything similar to Mac’s Xcode available on a PC?
Thanks again
WILL THIS WORK ON WINDOWS 2000?????
@Big Bob,
Yes, it should work because we are running inside visualization software. Make sure your host computer support VT and enough of RAM.
Is this post still running?
i have a peculiar problem running the new vbox.& mac osx 10.6.3 on win 7 my mouse works great. the keyboard stopped working after i installed the bottloader permanently… any help would be appreciated.
PS: this tut was great, i scoured the net for days and no one post gave a tut as complete as this one… big up !
@Werner,
Yes, this post is very much running, but I’m late in replying ;(
Is ‘Enable absolute pointing device’ is ticked in VM’s settings ( under system)?
If it worked before boot loader installation, sorry to say, remove it.
Is Win7 32 bit or 64 bit? are you using correct boot loader?