Run mac os with vmware

macOS Big Sur on VMware (with Xcode)

Complete guide to running macOS Big Sur with Xcode on Windows with VMware

Before following anything in this guide, please be aware that you may be violating the Terms of Service, License, and/or EULA for Apple and VMware. You will be running Apple software on non Apple hardware and modifying VMware software. You are responsible for reading and accepting any Terms of Service or License agreements that accompany any software you download or install. I wouldn’t recommend doing this on a computer you don’t own, and I REALLY wouldn’t recommend doing it on a work computer.

FYI, running a macOS on any type of X86 (Intel) CPU will likely no longer be an option by somewhere around 2025 to 2027. This includes the VMware method outlined here See here for more details: https://dortania.github.io/hackintosh/updates/2020/11/12/bigsur-new.html#death-of-x86-and-the-future-of-hackintoshing

This guide is designed to show you how to run the latest version of macOS Big Sur on a Windows PC (in this guide, PC includes desktop, laptop, etc.) with VMware Workstation Player (free product). This is for a new install only. For upgrades, see the link at the top of the page. VMware is a virtualization platform that allows you to run multiple operating systems on a single computer. We will be modifying VMware to add the feature to run macOS on Windows. I’ll also cover settings required to get Xcode working. This guide is for somewhat modern (not ancient) Intel computers. It likely will not work for AMD processors.

If you have a high end modern Windows PC, this setup will run pretty well. If you have an older PC, it will likely still work, but a bit slower. My purpose for doing this is to build a particular application for a personal iPhone a couple of times a year. The minimum requirements for your PC are listed here: https://www.vmware.com/products/player/faqs.html

It is critical you follow every step in this guide. If you don’t, it will not work. If you don’t get the expected result, you must stop and figure out why. If you proceed anyway, it will not work.

Installation

Step 1: Extract the macOS (11.0) VMware disk image file
Browse to where you saved this file “macOS 11.0 Big Sur by MK.zip”, and extract it with the Windows Utility. It may take while, so you can proceed to the next step while it is running. Just don’t reboot (if asked) until this step is complete. After it is complete, you can delete the original zip file “macOS 11.0 Big Sur by MK.zip”

Step 2: Install VMware Workstation for Windows
Install VMware, the 3rd file you downloaded above.

I would uncheck these 2 boxes. The rest of the default options should be fine.

Step 3: Patch VMware
This is a crucial step. It is frequently overlooked. If it is not completed successfully, you will not be able to proceed. Extract the previously downloaded “VMware Unlock/Patch tool”. Browse to the extracted files, and right click “win-install.cmd” and select Run as Administrator. Pay attention to any output you see on your screen. This must be run successfully.

Step 4: Create Virtual Machine
Open the installed VMware player and click on “create a new virtual machine”.

The new virtual machine wizard will be opened. Choose to install the operating system later from the options and click on “Next”. In the next page, choose the Guest operating system which in this case is Apple Mac OS X and then Version macOS 11.0. Click on the “Next” button.

In the next screen, name the virtual machine (whatever you want) and choose where it is to be stored by browsing to the location. Any LOCAL (not cloud) disk is fine. Click on the “Next” button. On this screen, specify the storage space to be allocated to the virtual machine. For now, allocate just 1 GB. It is temporary and it will be removed in subsequent steps. Choose “Store virtual disk as a single file” and click “Next”. Confirm everything and click on “Finish”.

Step 5: Edit the Virtual Machine
Open VMware and select “macOS 11” (or whatever you named it). Click on “Edit the virtual machine”
Select the Memory tab. You want to choose about half of the available memory on your PC. You can adjust this later. If you have a lot of RAM on your PC (12 GB, 16 GB, more) you can be generous here. The key is you have to leave at least 4 GB or so of RAM for your PC to use, but the more you are able to give to the macOS, the faster it will be.

Set the CPU cores to an appropriate setting. If you have 8 cores, 4 would be great. This is similar to Memory. You want to give it enough to perform well, but you can’t starve your Windows machine to the point where it can’t function. Uncheck all boxes as shown. Click “OK” to accept the changes.

In the list of devices, choose the “Hard Disk” on device menu option. Click on “Remove” button. This removes the virtual hard disk created when first creating the virtual machine.

To make a new virtual disk on VMware, click on Hard Disk on the list of devices then choose “SATA” followed by “Use an Existing disk”.

To select the disk, use the browse button to open the location where the “macOS 11.0 Big Sur by MK.vmdk” file is stored. Select it and click on “Finish”.

It should default to an 80 GB hard drive. 80 GB is the absolute minimum to function. You need 120 GB to have everything work well and not go through a hassle every time you do a Xcode or OS update. If you have the space on your PC, increase this to 120 GB. If you can get to 120, expand it as much as you can. Expanding your disk can take a while, so be patient. If you do expand beyond the default 80 GB, you will need to do Step **8.

The last change you need to make in the virtual machine settings is to set your USB controller to USB 2.0. If you do not do this, you will not be able to plug your iPhone and connect it to Xcode.

Step 6: Play macOS Big Sur
Open the VMware player if you had closed it and click on “play virtual machine”, and create a new account. If you get a SATA warning, you may ignore and dismiss it.

If/when you see this message about VMware tools, choose never remind me.

The rest of the options are your preference. They are the same you would see on a normal mac. Assuming you aren’t migrating from an exiting device (I wouldn’t), you will need to select this option.

Step 7: Install VMware Tools on Virtual Machine
In VMware Player, click Player, Manage, Install VMware Tools. Then click on “Install VMware tools”. If that hasn’t popped up, click on the VMware Tools Drive on the top right. The default options are fine.

You will see these screens in the sequence shown below. On picture 2, you will click the lock symbol to unlock it, and then you will be able to click the allow button. You can the click the option to restart.

Step **8: Expand MacOS partition
You only do this step if you expanded your your virtual disk beyond the default 80 GB. If you did, follow these steps. If you left it at 80, proceed to “You are done…” below.
1) Open terminal by pressing Command + space bar to open the Spotlight Search bar (the Mac Command key is the same as the Windows key)
2) Type Term in the Spotlight Search bar and select Terminal to open the Terminal window
3) Copy and paste this command into Terminal
sudo diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk1 0
4) When prompted, enter your Mac password and press Enter. Please note that it will appear as if you’ve typed nothing on your screen, but if you type in your password properly, you should start to see various lines of code start to appear in Terminal.
5) Wait patiently while your hard drive expands on your Virtual Mac. Ultimately, you will get a message that you’ve Finished APFS operation.
6) Click on the Apple icon in the upper left corner and select About This Mac – Storage to confirm your success! You can now close Terminal.

You are done installing and configuring. You now have a running instance of macOS.

Connecting your iPhone
You can connect your iPhone (or iPod Touch) to a USB port on your PC. If VMware is open, you will receive a prompt asking how you want to handle your removable device.

Choose whichever option you like. Eventually, it will have to connect to the Virtual Machine.

If you don’t connect it to your VM initially, you will see a grey iOS icon in the top right corner of your VMware session. If it has a green dot on it, you are all set.

If it is not connected, you just need to connect it. right click the icon, and select the option to connect.

This is what it should look like when your iPhone is connected to your macOS VMware session.

Your iPhone must be visible to macOS to connect to it in Xcode. If you are having trouble accessing your iPhone is macOS, verify it is accessible in iTunes as a test.

Now you have macOS running with an iPhone connected. Your hardware is now ready to work in conjunction with Xcode to deploy an application to your iPhone.

***Many Virtual Big Sur users are unable to use the macOS update utility until they are on at least patch 11.5. See this page for instructions for manually updating to 11.6.***
https://macosvmware.tech.blog/macos-update-links/

Additional notes:
You can normally apply minor updates to macOS. Make sure not to update to a version not supported by other components you may be using this solution for.

You can install VMware updates, but you will have to run the Patch/Unlocker script again after the update. Do not update to a new major version such as going from 16 to 17 without confirming it is supported

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Easily Run Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion Retail on PC with VMware Image – Simple Steps

VMware and VirtualBox made hackintosh easy by allowing us to work as separate virtual machine, rather than disturbing existing physical OS. After Apple has released the final retail version of Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, this VMware image made from latest version by a reliable source. The pre installed VMware image is created by souldevteam and all credits go to them. I’m here just explaining how to make it work and run Mac OS X 10.8 mountain lion retail version on VMware with Intel PC and Windows 7.

Sysprobs covered several hackintosh guides with VMware and VirtualBox here. Also we earlier published few articles based on souldevteam blog too .

Update: By Any chance if you are looking for latest OS X 10.9 Mavericks, read our below famous guides,

This method is completely for testing and learning purpose only. Do not use this method on production environment or permanently for long term. You can’t get the all features of Mac OS X from this method as how it works on Apple hardware. We always recommend to buy Apple hardware to run Mac OS X. Also, few users keep on asking about their Apps development and Xcode support on virtualized hackintosh. Frankly, I do not know whether these all will work on this platform, if it works, you are lucky.

What all Required to Run 10.8 Mountain Lion Retail VMware Image on Windows

1) Hardware Virtualization Technology (VT) enabled processor. I do not fully recommend VT pypasser (to skip this check) tool which is included in this download.

2) Pre installed VMware image with few tools. VMware unlocker and darwin.iso are important.

3) VMware workstation 8 or later versions

Easy Steps

2) Use 7z program to unzip the download, after extraction the size should be around 6.2 GB

3) Check and make sure your physical computer processor supports Hardware Virtualization Technology (VT). Read our previous guide about how to use VT checker tool and confirm it.

4) Use VMware unlocker (which will be available on same extracted location) and patch the existing VMware workstation 7 or 8 series. Use the correct version of unlocker. Read more about how to use VMware unlocker to get Mac OS X guest support.

After the patch, make sure you are getting Apple Mac OS X option as shown below.

5) Once the step 3 and 4 are succeeded, open ‘OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.vmx’ from extracted location through VMware workstation ‘File –> Open’ menu.

6) That should open the pre installed Mountain Lion retail VMware virtual machine. Before powering on, you can modify processor and RAM settings depending on available resources on physical computer. I have increased the RAM to 2GB and number of processor cores to 2 as I have core2duo physical processor.

7) Now power on the virtual machine. If all settings are correct, the Mac OS X 10.8 virtual machine should start with initial setup screen of Language settings as below.

That’s it, we are almost done. After completing all initial settings (you can skip few too), you should land on mountain lion desktop without any issues.

I recommend to take a snapshot now before proceeding further.

Install VMware Tools on Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion Virtual Machine – Intel PC, Windows 7

Network and sound worked out of the box without additional installations or settings.

To get more screen resolution sizes, VMware shared folder and slightly better performance, we need to install VMware tools on mountain lion virtual machine.

8.) To install, load the darwin.iso file to virtual machine’s CD/DVD drive. Darwin.iso located at same extracted place.

Once it is loaded to CD/DVD drive, the virtual machine will automatically detect and load it on desktop as below.

Double click and run ‘Install VMware Tools’ application. You may need to enter your password and select the disk to continue the installation.

For some reasons, VMware tools installation failed on Mountain lion virtual machine, but nothing to worry. Press close and restart the virtual machine manually.

9) After virtual machine is restarted, you will find more screen resolutions under display settings. Also, the full screen mode (from VMware menu bar) will work now.

VMware Shared Folders on Mountain Lion 10.8 and Windows 7

Few users reported that drag and drop of files between Mac OS X guest and Windows host is not working even after VMware tools installation. Yes, it is not working and we can’t complain about it, because VMware is not officially supporting Mac OS X virtualization on non Apple hardware. So, we need to live with it.

But, if you like to transfer files between Mac OS X guest and Windows host frequently without any types of networking connectivity or network sharing, then you can use VMware shared folders feature. This will work only after VMware tools installation.

You can access specific folders or partitions of Windows 7 host OS thorough VMware shared folders from Mountain Lion guest OS. That will enable the file transfer back and forth easily. It is nothing to do with networking or network file sharing, it is completely a different technology.

To set it up, go to virtual machine’s settings and Enable the folder sharing first. Then, add the partition or folder of Windows host.

Wait for some to mount this drive or folder inside Mountain Lion virtual machine.

You will find a new drive under computer on OS X. By opening the drive you can access the hosts’ shared drive or folder.

Depending on the mode you selected (with read-only or not), you can save the data too.

This is really fast and easy to transfer files and folders between Mac OS X 10.8 guest and Windows host machines.

Enjoy and play around with 10.8 Mountain Lion retail version on VMware!.

Dinesh

Dinesh is the founder of Sysprobs and written more than 400 articles. Enthusiast in Microsoft and cloud technologies with more than 15 years of IT experience.

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241 thoughts on “Easily Run Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion Retail on PC with VMware Image – Simple Steps”

I’m pretty sure you need 64 bit.
Mac is x64 not 32

I can’t get 10.8.3 to work with an AMD E-450 CPU, which supports AMD hardware based virtualization, and X64. It starts up, and just sits on the Apple logo, with a grey screen. The host Operating system is Windows 7 professional X64 with Vmware Workstation 8.06, however the original 10.4.3 Virtual Machine that I made back in 2005 runs on it.

I have win 7 64 bit

I am running Windows 7 32 bit, but my processor supports 64 Virtualization mode (checked it)

Almost all Core 2 Duo or newer Intel CPU’s support 64bit virtualization. Even if the version of Windows you are running does not take advantage of that capability, it’s still there.

Choppy sound.
Mods to .vmx file.

You may get differeing results.
=======================
sound.highPriority = TRUE
usb.present = “TRUE”
ehci.present = “TRUE”
sound.present = “TRUE”
sound.virtualDev = “es1371”
sound.fileName = “Speakers (Conexant CX20671 SmartAudio HD)”
sound.autodetect = “FALSE”
===================================

FYI this does not work with ESXi. I’ve tried multiple times to get it to work. It simply doesn’t though. Something about incompatible drives.

I cant seem to sign in with iMessage… anyone else get that working?

No, cant get it working either. Can’t see what the problem could be either unless its some sort of network related thing?

iMessage on Mountain Liion, Can’t get this baby to work. Here’s the problem.

iMessage checks the System Serial Number – if it’s not a VALID apple device number, iMessage won’t work.
and guess what – it’s not a valid number. This is the number shown by System Information.
System Serial Number: VMWVk3VS65lFQP5LgB7iOnenA
Not a valid Device Serial Number,
not to be confused with the Hardware UUID.
00000000-0000-1000-8000-000C29DEEDFD
.
There is a boot loader called Chameleon that is supposed to fix this – but it doesn’t make the slightest difference.

So – if anyone has made any headway on this, it’s be interesting.

The other nice thing would be to be able to fix the sound – properly.

There is a iMessage enabler on the Dev´s website…

iMessage.
Still searching for a solution. It may be an impossible task.
Firstly, this is an example of a valid Serial Number:
Serial Number: C02CV046DV7P
If you enter it into this web form, you will see a lot of information about the actual computer it belongs to.
http://www.appleserialnumberinfo.com/Desktop/index.php

I then found this on a forum …
https://discussions.apple.com/message/1003263?messageID=1003263&amp%3b#1003263
and …
After spending ages fiddling with this, it still makes no difference.
==================
Then:
1) Enable Root User, using NetInfo Manager (in the Utilities folder), menu Security.
2) Navigate to /System/Library/CoreServices/loginwindow.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj, and open “AboutThisMac.strings” with Property List Editor (in /Developer/Applications/Utilities).
3) Find the parameter ABOUTBOX_SERIAL_NUMBER_FORMATSTRING; the value will be “Serial Number %@”; Replace %@ with your serial number and save/close/quit Property List Editor.
4) Use NetInfo Manager again to disable root user.

Act carefully with this one, don’t touch anything else, and don’t forget to disable root user when you are done.
=================================

I don’t think it really matters what is in that list.

NOW. The question really is. Where is this VMWare image getting it’s Serial Number from. Is it coming from the hardware I am running it on?
If you run your VM-Mac, and on the Apple icon, top left, click on About This Mac, then System Information, you will see your Serial Number. But it will be invalid.

and – where ever the Serial Number is coming from – can we change it within the VM files or not.

Ok, I don’t think the above works on the latest VM.
Nor do the instructions from the link at the top of this blog – from the Souldev team.

I can find NOTHING that will make the latest – 10.8.3, with VMWorksation on x64 Win8, work.

Sorry for the amount of traffic folks. I guess I can live without iMessage anyway. 🙂

This was about the iMessage. Stil lcan’t get it working.

Has anyone managed to get the onboard video camera working on a laptop?

YES. Woo Hoo. Onboard camera working on my Toshiba + Win 8 + OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. and VMWorkstation 9.

How To.
Start VMWorkstation.
Do not start the Guest OS
Go to the tab along the top that says VM
Click on Removable Devices
— if you have an onboard camera – as I do on the toshiba laptop –
click on Importec USB camera. It will then tell you that each time the VM starts, it wil ldisconnect the camera from the host. OK, continue.
Close the VMWorkstation, then start it up again, then the Mac OSX, and test it by starting PhotoBooth.

It should work – unless you have some sort of strange arrangement.

Try to use Virtual Box instead of VMWorkstation. It’s kinda bit slow !! Trust me. If you have a fast machine VM Workstation is good but Virtual Box is more for an instance !! hehe

hmm. YAP. (Yet another problem)
Can’t seem to play movie trailers in iTunes. Sound – but just a black screen.

Hi,
running mountain lion 64 VMware 9 on xw8400 win7x64
so far so good Thanks!
the shared folder appears on desktop at start
than quickly disappears any fix for this?
TIA

Does anyone know the location and name of the boot files for this Mac version? And how to change them.

I have found
/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration
and
/Extra
which contain things like

It seems I’m on a false trail anyway I think. This type of install, that is, running as a VMWare machine under VM Workstation, means that the Mac is booted by means other than anything that will read SMBios.plist, or the com.apple.Boot.plist files.
I am unable to discover how it actually does start up the mac. But, there are two files that it uses, config.ini and preferences.ini. Maybe they can be tweeked to reflect a startup scene that will read the SMBios files. Or something can.
However – this is also probably the wrong Blog to be asking, as apart from about one post a month – I appear to be the only one reading this.

Unlocker 7.1.x Series for Player (5.0.2) doesn’t work.

VMware Authorization Service wurde erfolgreich beendet.
—–
Mac OS X guest unlocker for VMware, version 7
Directory C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Player\\\\\\x64:
File vmware-vmx.exe:
Unlocking Mac OS X guest on non-Mac host …
Unlocking Mac OS X Client guest (method 0) …
File vmware-vmx-debug.exe: Missing file.
File vmware-vmx-stats.exe: Missing file.

File C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Player\\\\\\vmwarebase.dll:
Error opening file.
—–
VMware Authorization Service wird gestartet.
VMware Authorization Service wurde erfolgreich gestartet.

any suggestions? Thx!

I have the same problem with VMware Player 5.0.2.

Are you in Administrator mode, in the CMD mode, (if in DOS) and in the directory where the VMWare binaries are?
You have to be in DOS mode
C:\>

Mac OSX 10.8.4, after update from Check for Updates

1.
iMessage will not work. There are some patches on the Soludev site, but very mixed results. Mostly it just crashes. The problem is, that iMessage needs to see a valid Apple Mac serial number. And it doesn’t on this setup. You can check this under “About My Mac”, and various links I have been looking at on earlier posts. Nothing I have done so far will get it to swap in a genuine serial number. The Souldev site has moved things around a bit. Everything downloadable is available here. http://www.souldevteam.net/blog/downloads/
If you are successful with the imessage patch, great. I can’t get it to work, it just crashes my system.
2.
I have video working with the native apps, like PhotoBooth, BUT – with Skype, iTunes, VLC, YouTube etc etc, I have sound, but only a black video display port. Where there should be a video, there is only a black square. I can not discover how to fix this yet. My system has a built in webcam – Toshiba Laptop L630, and the camera works – except in Skype.

3.
Sound remains very patchy. I’m pretty sure it’s caused by latency in transfering it to the host system. Not sure but haven’t looked much at fixing it yet.

4. I have the original VMTools installed – but after upgrading my VMWorkstation to V9 (legal copy) I think I may have broken something – although everything seems to still work. Not too sure what VMTools does in total yet.

Needed: Fix for the video thing problem, and some way of patching that pesky iMessaage thing.

well, I didnt reach the cdrom from guest, but I just download darwin iso in mac os x, and mount it, then i was able to install vmware tools!

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