Install Mac OS X Snow Leopard On Windows Using VirtualBox

For years people have wanted to run Mac OS X on their Windows computers but of course Apple is famously strict when it comes to not allowing their operating system to run on anything other than a Mac. Since the switch to Intel processors Hackintoshing has become quite popular but still there are problems. Hardware support is notoriously finicky with problems for everything from CPU, motherboard and much much more which has kept it from being an option to all but the most advanced users.

Today however we will be bringing you a tutorial that should let you get OS 10.6 Snow Leopard up and running on your Windows computer simply and easily. Before we begin, there are a few disclaimers. First of all, while this is much easier than Hackintoshing there still is a fair bit of work involved so you still should know your way around a computer in the (very likely) case something doesn’t work right. Google is your best friend for most problems. You should also read this tutorial very carefully before proceeding. If you miss a step you might end up having to restart.

Installing OS X on something other than Apple hardware is a violation of the EULA (End User License Agreement) so keep that in mind. Using the following method involves using a custom ISO of Snow Leopard but we highly recommend you buy a physical copy of Mac OS X Snow Leopard. Zijric does not condone piracy.

Now that that is out of the way let’s begin. To install Snow Leopard on your Windows computer you will need the following:

• A moderately powerful Windows computer (this method should in theory work for Linux as well but we have not tested it)
• The free OS visualization software VirtualBox
• A copy of an OSX86 ISO. This tutorial assumes you are using the Hazard Snow Leopard installer (which you should be able to find by searching).

Once you have everything you’re ready to begin. Open up VirtualBox and select New. At the menu click Next. VirtualBox will then prompt you about what operating system you are installing. Type Mac and it should automatically select Mac OS X Server. Click Next. Now it will ask how much RAM you want to allot to OS X. The minimum should be 1024MB but if you can spare more then that’s great. Just be sure that your computer does have at least 1GB of free RAM and you should be all set. Once you have selected the amount of RAM hit Next. Next comes creating your virtual hard drive. In reality you are just creating a file on your computer but to OS X it is the entire hard drive. There are two options, dynamic and static. Dynamic storage will shrink and expand in use so you don’t have to worry about running out of space or creating too big of a file. However there is a performance hit when using this option and it can sometimes be a bit glitchy. I use static which just creates a fixed size file for the hard drive so I would recommend that but you can do it either way. You will need to give the OS at least 20GB but again this will depend on your computer. If you have a large hard drive and think you’ll be using Snow Leopard a lot you might want to give it more. As long as it’s more than 20GB you should be okay. Select however large you want to make your hard drive and then hit Finish. This will take a few minutes. As soon as it’s done click Finish. You’ll then be brought back to the main menu where you should now see your new OS listed. We’re almost ready to install Snow Leopard but first there are a couple things we need to do. Click on the Settings menu and select Storage from the menu. There should be two things listed, the .vdi file that you just created and an entry that says Empty. Click on this and then click the icon with the green arrow to the right of the CD/DVD Drive menu. In the Virtual Media Manager window hit the Add button and select the ISO. Click it then hit the Select button. Then go over to the System menu. In the System menu you need to uncheck the Enable EFI option. At this point you are ready to begin the installation. However you might be able to improve the performance of OS X further. If your computer supports hardware virtualization then you should go into the Processor tab in General and select two CPUs instead of one. If you don’t know whether or not your CPU can handle hardware virtualization I suggest you look it up as selecting the two CPU option on my computer speeds up Snow Leopard noticeably. If your computer doesn’t support this however feel free to leave it alone. Another optional thing you can do is improve the graphics capability in Snow Leopard. To do this select the Display tab. There are a few options here that again depend on your computer. By default VirtualBox will allot 7MB of video memory however it’s likely your graphic card should be able to support more than that. I have found that 32MB works quite well for me. Another thing you might want to try is selecting Enable 3D Acceleration. For some computers this might degrade performance so feel free to leave it alone if you like as again it’s entirely optional. So now we are ready to install Snow Leopard. Before you begin I suggest quickly double checking all your settings to make sure you didn’t miss anything. Hit Ok to go back to the main VirtualBox menu. Click on the Mac entry and hit Start. The OS will begin to boot so as soon as the VirtualBox splash logo goes away click anywhere inside the window and press F8 quickly. Then type in “-v” without the quotation marks and press enter to start up with diagnostic messages enabled so you can see what happens if something goes wrong. If you get an error message and the screen freezes don’t worry. Just press the Right CTRL key and close the VirtualBox window then open it back up and do the last step again. Once it boots correctly you should be at the language screen. Just select your language and hit the Next button. Now click Continue on the Mac OS X Installer screen and Agree. You should then be prompted to select a destination to install OS X. Go to the top of the window and click Utilities. Select Disk Utility. In Disk Utility you should see just a single disk listed on the left. Click it and then come over to the Erase tab. Go down to the Name box and name it what you like. Then hit the Erase button on the bottom right. Give it a minute or so to finish. Then select Disk Utility on the menu bar and click Quit. Now you should be on the Installer menu. Click on the disc you just created and click Continue. Now is a very critical screen. Click Customize. If you go ahead with the install now without selecting the proper options you will be forced to restart the process. There are quite a few options here but for the purposes of this tutorial we are going to ignore most and just install the necessary ones.

If you are using an Intel processor you will need to select:

• Both the 10.6.1 and 10.6.2 Updates
• The latest Chameleon update (found in bootloaders)
• The Legacy kernel (found in kernels)

If you have an AMD processor then you will need to select:

• Both the 10.6.1 and 10.6.2 Updates
• The AMD option (found in System Support)
• The Legacy kernel (found in kernels)

Once you have selected the proper options hit Done then Install. The install will likely take a while to finish so go do something else for a bit while OS X is being installed. As soon as it has finished installing you’re almost done. Click the Right CTRL key then go to the top VirtualBox menu and select Devices. Go to CD/DVD Devices and click on the Snow Leopard ISO. Then go over to the Machine tab and click Reset. Give it a couple minutes and then OS X should boot for the first time. Then just go through the setup screens. Congratulations, you now have Snow Leopard running inside VirtualBox.

While in general Snow Leopard runs quite well, it’s not perfect. As with any virtualized OS it won’t run as fast as it ordinarily would but I’ve found that in general it’s more than sufficiently fast. Not everything will work out of the box however so now I will show you how to fix the main problems you’re likely to have.

Resolution:

By default OS X will be at 1024×768. This might be okay if you have a very old monitor but odds are you are going to want something quite a bit higher. There are two different ways of fixing this. First I’ll begin with the simplest. Restart OS X. When it hits the boot screen, press any key. Then tab down to the video info entry. There are some resolutions listed here, to choose one just make sure the resolution you want is listed at the bottom. I run Snow Leopard on a second monitor in full screen mode alongside Windows 7 and the resolution on it is 1280×1024. Now start the OS and it should be in your resolution.

If this method does not work or you have a widescreen monitor you can try manually adjusting the resolution. Often times it will not work properly though so you might need to settle for a smaller resolution. Click here for the tutorial.

Sound:

Another issue is that sound will not work out of the box. This is very easy to fix however. Just click here and download the package then restart. It won’t be perfect but you will at least be able to hear sound.

And that’s it for the full Mac OS X 10.6 VirtualBox tutorial. If you have any problems or found a better way to do anything in this tutorial please let us know in the comments.

Enjoy OS X!

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