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How to Install Snow Leopard [VMWare]

Tarandeep Singh

If you wish to install Snow Leopard on a Windows box under VMWare Workstation 7, here’s a quick guide.

Pre-requisites:

Need to install Snow Leopard Natively?

Step-by-step guide:

Step 1. Open the .vmdk file and Edit virtual machine settings. Adjust RAM, Graphics, CPU settings to your preferred values. I recommend 1GB and above RAM if you  have physical RAM > 2.5GB. For the Graphics keep it somewhere above 50 mb to get QE/CI on Snow Leopard. And for the processor, use as many cores as possible.

Step 2. Set your CD/DVD location to ISO image Darwin_Snow.iso

Step 3. Now Run the virtual machine and hit F8 quickly. You`ll get boot options as shown below:

Boot Menu
c: Boot DVD
h: Boot First Hard Drive
e: Eject DVD

Your choice:

Step 4. Before continuing, you need to swap your CD image with Snow Leopard ISO/DVD. To do this, right click on the CD icon in toolbar in the bottom right and click settings. Now located your DVD drive or set the ISO image.

Step 5. Return to the boot menu that appeared in Step 3 and hit c for “boot DVD”. Press F8 again for advanced options on Snow Leopard installer. On the boot loader enter “-v” and Enter to start installation in verbose mode.

Step 6. It would be couple of minutes before you see the main installer User Interface. Install Snow Leopard the usual way by creating Mac OS Journaled partition and de-selecting few un-needed drivers, other stuff under the customization tab. You should finish up booting into Snow LEopard without any issues.

If you face any issues, it’s easy to geta  hold of it by contacting me on Twitter @Taranfx or leave a comment below.

Post Install:

Fixing Sound:

Take a VMWare snapshot, then Mount the darwin_snow.iso as the virtual drive. We will now attempt to make Graphics and sound to work properly. “Install VMware Tools” and Reboot. You should boot up all fine with better graphics and resolution.

Now we will attempt Installing Sound card drivers. Take a snapshot of the VM. Run the pkg EnsoniqAudioPCI.mpkg, choose both options, reboot.

Fixing Video Resolution:

  1. Edit the boot.plist file to anywhere and edit it. /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist
  2. Edit boot.plist and Reboot
<key>Graphics Mode</key>
<string>1280×1024x32</string>

You can specify any resolution above.

Note: if you have problems editing the boot.plist, edit via command line with root permissions.

After the Reboot, you should be able to see the new resoltion in Place. If you wish to enable full Graphics acceleration (QE/CI), Install EFI and then change the following parameter in boot.plist:

<key>GraphicsEnabler</key>
<string>y</string>

IMPORTANT: You will always need to use the darwin_snow.iso to boot your VM. So keep it configured under CD/DVD

Once everything is done, you can use the VMWare image to run under VMWare player, free of cost.

Everything should be all smooth, in case you need help or assistance Twitter @Taranfx is your PoC.

[credits: prasys (for compiling VMWare files), Insanelymac (for more Tips)]

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