If you are looking for a pre installed Mac Snow Leopard VMware image, then this post will be useful to find out the correct image and how to install Snow Leopard on VMware Player or Workstation. Here, I demonstrate simple steps to install Mac 10.6.4 Snow Leopard with pre installed VMware image.
The following method is completely for testing and learning purpose. Do not use in production or permanent use. Buy Mac hardware and software to run permanently.
UPDATED ON 17-06-2010
This post has been updated with three fixes.
1) For AMD Users – Use different Boot loader (darwin legacy) as mentioned here.
2) For Windows 7 64 Bit Host Users – Use same boot loader (darwin legacy) mentioned here.
3) Not Booting, or Apple boot loader stuck – Use Step 14 at last
Why Pre Installed Mac Snow Leopard Image?
1) Easy to import in VMware and start using it.
2) Mac Installation already done, DVD or ISO not required.
3) Saves your time by avoiding installation and patching for x86 computers.
4) Drivers already installed. Sound, Network and Screen resolution working fine in this image.
5) Updating to 10.6.3 or 10.6.4 is working well.
6) Not required to install any boot loaders..
The Demonstration PC Configuration;
Intel Core2Duo 2.66GHz
3GB DDR2 RAM
Intel P35 Chipset
Windows 7 32 Bit Host
Required Products for install Mac 10.6.4 Snow Leopard on VMware with Pre Installed Mac VMware Image
I’m going to install and run this image in VMware Player 3, because somehow I feel VMware Player works better then VMware workstation. Only one drawback is snapshots. Similar posts show how to install Leopard in VMware and Sun VirtualBox with pre installed image available below.
Install Mac 10.5.5 Leopard on VMware Workstation
Install Mac 10.5.5 Leopard on VMware Player
Install Mac 10.5.5 Leopard on Sun VirtualBox
OK, let’s go to the requirements.
1) VMware Player 3 or Later
2) Snow Leopard VMware Image (it’s a torrent download.2.3GB (without VMware workstation) approx size with 7z compressed format.)
3) Read this post and make sure VT is enabled in host computer BIOS. This image required VT enabled.
4) And…… nothing else.
Installation Steps
1) Extract the Image. It contains VMX,VMDK and other tools required.
2) Make sure VT is enabled.
3) Open Mac OS Snow Leopard.vmx file in VMware Player.
Edit virtual machine settings as you like. Suggested settings are increasing RAM and number of cores in processor. If Mac stuck with any kernel errors then change processor core to one. Do not change anything in virtualization engine under processors.
4) That’s it. Play the virtual machine. I’m sure you will get Snow Leopard desktop without any problems. Do not worry about the language you see on screen. I already changed it to English, so follow the steps as I’m showing in screen.
5) Click on Preferences icon on desktop.
6) Click Languages icon.
7) Press Edit List button and remove unwanted language and leave U.S English. Also, go to Formats and change the region suits for you.
Log of and log in, you will see U.S English desktop and menus.
8.) Admin Password for Image
Admin user name for this image is svp and password is 123. You can use this 123 password to reset new password for root.
9) USB Devices Access
Yes, it worked. My external USB hard disk and flash disks worked inside Mac Virtual machine. I had to mount external hard disk in disk utility.
10) Network
Bridged and NAT network worked out of the box without any patches in this image.
11) Screen Resolution and Wide Screen support on Mac Snow Leopard Virtual Machine.
It worked great in this image. So many screen resolution options are available. The best part is, if you change the VMware Player screen size, Snow Leopard screen size also changed according it to fit the screen.
Check my earlier post here to how to install multiple screen resolutions in Mac VMware virtual machines.
12) Sound
For some reasons, sound did not work for me straightaway. If it doesn’t work for you, go to the extracted folder (which is from download), locate SVP folder. Install EnsoniqAudioPCI.mpkg in Mac virtual machine. Restart the machine after installation. Sound started working for me.
13) Software update to Snow Leopard 10.6.3
This image is having updates up to 10.6.2. Software update to 10.6.3 worked without any issues in this image. I downloaded 10.6.3 combo updates from Apple site, updated successfully.
There you go, you have a running Mac Snow Leopard on VMware Player in normal Intel PC. I’m sure this will work with Intel i7 processors also. For AMD, use the correct boot loader..
If you face any difficulties to follow these steps or stuck somewhere, feel free ask in comments area, don’t forget to drop a comments if it works also. You can use the method to run Snow leopard in VMware workstation, which is having snapshot feature.
Here is a screen shot of working Snow Leopard on VMware Player 3 with pre installed VMware image.
14) Booting Issues
If booting stuck with apple logo, you can try this method.
Shut down VM completely, open Mac OS Snow Leopard.vmx file in text editor, look for smc.present=”TRUE” line. Change this value to FALSE. So, it will be smc.present=”FALSE”.
This step may solve booting issues, booting slowness and keyboard, mouse delay.
it says “OS not found”
I’m using core i3 2.53 GHz, 2gb ram, win7 32 bit
btw, I already changed the iso from ‘darwin’ to ‘darwin_snow’ but still it says “OS not found” please somebody help me…
i got fixed this using darwin_snow_legacy.iso..
hope this will help u too..
darwin_snow_legacy.iso download
http://www.sendspace.com/file/0f4urs
Unfortunatelly, i’m still not able to launch it. I have an AMD Turion X2 CPU, and Windows 7 x64.
Can anybody help me ?
Unfortunately, alot of AMD machines don’t support snow leopard very well. For example, 10.6.4 runs flawlessy on my pc but updating to 10.6.8 gets me a string of errors. Oh well.
Yeah, The version I downloaded worked, but as soon as i did an update to the latest version, it killed the machine. Fortunately I had backed up the virtual hard drive.
The mail app does not work, It says you have v4.0. It can’t be used on OSX v10.6.2. how do you get the correct one?
I ran software update and this fixed it!
I changes the input source to be British, and am displaying the keyboard in the menu bar, It is showing British.
Why then when I type I am still getting the US keyboard layout?
What is the username/password? The said ones in this article does not work. Please advice. Great work btw…
Reset password before change language and keyboard
I too was facing the boot loop of doom. I renamed the darwin ISO to darwin_snow_legacy.ISO. I edited my settings in the VM on the CD rom it was set to use physical drive. I changed the drive to load image, pointed to the Darwin image, and the machine now works!
Hope this helps!
Thank you very much for this. It works perfectly. No problems installing, sound worked out-the-box, all I can say is : Fantastic!
I had this working the other day on VMWare 7.1.3 then decided to try to get Lion working. I installed VMWare 8 and everything stopped working. I went back to 7.1.3 and nothing works. I did everything the same as before but it never gets to the Darth Vader screen anymore. It doesnt seem to recognise the darwin legacy image anymore (I dont get the lines of ……………………… that i used to get) It seems to be using darwin, but no the legacy one. I deleted the orignal darwin one to be on the safe side but still no luck. Any suggestions?
I installed this on Win 7 Home Premium 64-bit and it runs just fine.. So cool! never thought I’d get Mac running on Windows, that’s the best 10 minutes I ever spent… thanks Dinesh from one very happy lady.
works fine when booting from darth vather screen on my AMD laptop. Now trying to update to 10.6.3. 10.6.8 update doesn’t work.
Same: AMD and can’t update.
Update to 10.6.3 works
Can someone seed the torrent. There are zero seeders. Does this image still works?
Worked for me, AMD.
update to 10.6.8 didn’t work.
do sosmebody know till which update it works?
Hello everybody,
Thanks for this tutorial.
I have installed Mac OS leopard 10.6 successfully on my laptop: Compaq 610, Intel core 2 duo 🙂
But I have an issue, when I install Itunes, It ask me to enter a password for Mac admin.
So what is the right password ?
Thanks for your help.
Best regards.
Hi Mate,
I think the password is – 123
amazing, worked with a double click and absolutely no problem. felt inside the russian comuter of this man, it even has russian Safari bookmarks. You’re the man! Worked immediately on a Mac through Windows 7 on Bootcamp……..quite redundant but I need this so I can re-install Mac Os on this mac…gonna BUY mac OS from the app store in here and create a bootable hard drive from this. My original OS X DVD doesn’t work!! And pirate OS X images didn’t work as well. I hope this will work!
I screwed up a few things in the vmx trying to be smart.
Can someone pastebin that file again. Really need it. Cannot download the whole 7z again.
thanks…just install snow leopard 10.6.1 on aspire 4520……using a darwin legacy and Snow_Leopard_10.6.1-10.6.2_SSE2_SSE3_Intel_AMD_by_Hazard…….