Install Mac 10.6.4 Snow Leopard on VMware Player with Pre Installed Mac VMware Image

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.