Run Mac OS X on PC, Free and Easy with VMware Player 3

Everybody likes to see and use Mac OS X, but how many of them are ready to buy Apple hardware? It’s very rare. This free and easy steps show how you can run Mac OS X on PC without buying any special hardware or software. This is completely free for testing and experimental use only.

I already published similar steps to run Mac OS X on PC with VMware workstation, obviously VMware workstation is not a free product. This time, let’s install and run Mac OS X on your PC with free product VMware Player 3.  You can run Mac OS X on any X86 Intel or AMD computers having enough of RAM to run Mac virtual machine by this method.

Installation is not much differing than earlier steps.

Follow the steps,

1)      Download Mac OS X 10.5.5 X86 VMware image here. ( It’s a torrent download)

2)      Download and install VMware player 3. It’s a free product.

3)      Extract the downloaded image file. See here for more details. ( it will be creating Mac VMware VMX file and VMware disk files)

4)      Start VMware player.

5)      Click on Open a Virtual machine.

6)      Browse for ‘ Mac OS X Leopard ‘ VMX file on the extracted location. Select and press open.

7)      Once clicked open, you can see the following summary screen.

By default, it’s not required to change any settings here. But still you can change anything if you want, like increasing memory size.

8)      You have to play around with processor virtualization option if virtualization is enabled on your PC BIOS. You can check whether virtualization is enabled or not on motherboard by running tools in Windows OS. Read more here about motherboard BIOS virtualization.

9)      My working Mac virtual machine processor settings show as below. (Already I disabled virtualization in BIOS)

It worked fine even after selected two processors.

10)   That’s it. Start Mac Virtual machine by pressing Start VM. I’m sure it will boot and work fine. If it hangs with Mac logo, you must check processor virtualization and disable it. Check my previous posts and some useful user comments about this.

In fact, it worked better than in VMware workstation as mentioned in previous post. This is just for testing and enjoying with Mac. This is the easiest method to run Mac OS X on PC based on X 86.

11) Mac OS X VMware image admin password

The Mac admin password is ‘ password’.

Password worked with administration tasks.

12) USB access in Mac OS X VMware image

My USB drive working fine in Mac VMware virtual machine. It can be accessed inside virtual machine without any difficulties.

13) Network in Mac OS X VMware image

Just for network test, I selected NAT as network adapter type in virtual machine option. Network is OK in this image. Mac virtual machine started communicating outside world through NAT.

14)   That’s it. I showed all above steps on my Intel X 86 Core 2 Duo computer. Enjoy the Mac OS X on your PC. To get better performance, please buy Apple hardware with original latest Mac. 

How Install Mac OSX in VMware Windows

Install Mac OSX in VMware Windows PC

This article explains step by step method to install Mac OSX in VMware on your Windows PC. If you are interested to learn something on Mac OS X 10.5.5 Leopard or do some testing on Mac OS, then you can continue read this article. This article is only for testing purpose. Whoever doesn’t have chance to buy apple hardware with Mac OS, can use this method to install and run Mac on VMware home Windows PC.

Installation is not ‘Very’ Easy

Installation is not easy as inserting the CD and click ‘Next’ ‘Next’ or running some executable files. I wanted to install and learn Macintosh OSX on Windows in my PC, so I searched on internet for possibilities to have Macintosh on Windows computer. The results returned nothing very useful other than changing your XP, Vista themes to Mac OS themes.  Based on the other tips in several sites and after I did it practically, now I’m writing this method to install mac on VMware in Windows PC.

But still I like to share what I found when I searched,

This video shows nicely how to change the XP theme to Mac OS theme. It looked as good video.  But when I tried to install it…., guess what? Anti-virus popped up. I left it. You can try how to change the XP theme to Mac OS theme if you want.

Step by step to change the Windows theme to Mac

But I’m talking about real Mac. As I said earlier installation is not very easy since both OS hardware platform requirements are different, Mac can be installed on Virtual PC on your PC. To make the installation easy, in other word “to avoid the Mac installation”, we will just import the Mac OS pre-installed hard disk to your PC using VMware.  Don’t be more confused, follow the below easy steps. Here are the requirements,

Software Requirements for Install Mac on VMware

Virtual PC software.  Several virtual PC software available, but this method goes with VMware workstation since we will be using VMware hard disk image.

VMware workstation 6 or moreyou can download the VMware workstation at VMware site here . Either you can try 30-day free evaluation version or buy the full version, but don’t ask crack.

Mac OS X 10.5.5 Leopard VMware image download
(Note – This is a torrent download)

Hardware Requirements:Make sure after you installed VMware workstation, you have minimum below  hardware resources to allocate for Mac OS.

RAM – 1GB

Hard Disk 15GB

Processor – Automatic allocation.

Install Mac on VMware Step by Steps

1) Install VMware Workstation.

2) Download Mac OSX 10.5.5 Leopard  VMware Hard disk image. ( Approx Size – 1.9GB)

3) Extract the Image to a folder (You need WinRAR for extraction and extracted size is Approx 9.4GB). Make sure extraction is successful and you get all VMware files as below

4) Start VMware workstation and open the Mac OS X Leopard.vmx. ( In VMware go to File – Open from extracted place)

5) Once you open the correct vmx files, you can see the configurations which already done on the image. The below screen is the default one when you open it, before you power on the virtual PC. ( this is what I’m getting in my PC)

6) Make sure Guest OS should be ‘FreeBSD’. Even if you have Dual processor and have option to select two processors in VMware option, DO NOT change to two. Leave the Processors 1 only. Do not worry about Hard disk allocation 30GB. You can increase the memory size if you have memory resource in your computer.

7) That’s it click ‘Power on this virtual machine’. Now you should be able to see Mac OS.

 In case your Mac stuck with following welcome screen for long time,

You must disable ‘Intel Hardware Virtualization’ from your BIOS.  Note that any time you enable or disable the Hardware virtualization setting in the BIOS; one has to completely power off (cold restart) the CPU for 10 seconds before booting.

Read More about how to Disable or Enable Hardware Virtualization in BIOS

Now start the Mac on VMware again, this time it will work fine.

Network

Somewhere I read that Network will not working in Mac with VMware, but it works fine with this image. I tested ‘Bridged’ and ‘NAT’ networks in VMware. It worked fine.

Mac Admin Password

This OS image has Mac Admin password, the password is ‘password ‘.

Mac VMX File

Here is the correct VMX file for your reference

.encoding = “windows-1252″

config.version = “8″

virtualHW.version = “7″

scsi0.present = “TRUE”

scsi0.virtualDev = “lsilogic”

memsize = “1024″

scsi0:0.present = “TRUE”

scsi0:0.fileName = “Mac OS X Leopard-000001.vmdk”

ide1:0.present = “TRUE”

ide1:0.autodetect = “TRUE”

ide1:0.deviceType = “cdrom-raw”

floppy0.present = “FALSE”

ethernet0.present = “TRUE”

ethernet0.startConnected = “TRUE”

ethernet0.virtualDev = “e1000″

ethernet0.wakeOnPcktRcv = “FALSE”

usb.present = “TRUE”

ehci.present = “TRUE”

sound.present = “TRUE”

sound.fileName = “-1″

sound.autodetect = “TRUE”

mks.enable3d = “TRUE”

pciBridge0.present = “TRUE”

pciBridge4.present = “TRUE”

pciBridge4.virtualDev = “pcieRootPort”

pciBridge4.functions = “8″

pciBridge5.present = “TRUE”

pciBridge5.virtualDev = “pcieRootPort”

pciBridge5.functions = “8″

pciBridge6.present = “TRUE”

pciBridge6.virtualDev = “pcieRootPort”

pciBridge6.functions = “8″

pciBridge7.present = “TRUE”

pciBridge7.virtualDev = “pcieRootPort”

pciBridge7.functions = “8″

vmci0.present = “TRUE”

monitor.virtual_mmu = “automatic”

monitor.virtual_exec = “automatic”

roamingVM.exitBehavior = “go”

displayName = “Mac OS X Leopard”

guestOS = “freebsd”

nvram = “Mac OS X Leopard.nvram”

virtualHW.productCompatibility = “hosted”

ft.secondary0.enabled = “TRUE”

tools.upgrade.policy = “useGlobal”

extendedConfigFile = “Mac OS X Leopard.vmxf”

ide1:0.fileName = “auto detect”

ide1:0.startConnected = “FALSE”

ethernet0.addressType = “generated”

tools.syncTime = “FALSE”

uuid.location = “56 4d 4e 0f ea ce 5e 03-83 66 d3 86 b7 b4 42 e4″

uuid.bios = “56 4d 4e 0f ea ce 5e 03-83 66 d3 86 b7 b4 42 e4″

scsi0:0.redo = “”

vmotion.checkpointFBSize = “134217728″

pciBridge0.pciSlotNumber = “17″

pciBridge4.pciSlotNumber = “21″

pciBridge5.pciSlotNumber = “22″

pciBridge6.pciSlotNumber = “23″

pciBridge7.pciSlotNumber = “24″

scsi0.pciSlotNumber = “16″

usb.pciSlotNumber = “32″

ethernet0.pciSlotNumber = “33″

sound.pciSlotNumber = “34″

ehci.pciSlotNumber = “35″

vmci0.pciSlotNumber = “36″

ethernet0.generatedAddress = “00:0c:29:b4:42:e4″

ethernet0.generatedAddressOffset = “0″

vmci0.id = “660874947″

tools.remindInstall = “TRUE”

checkpoint.vmState = “”

ethernet0.connectionType = “nat”