We've already covered how to install Mac OS X Snow Leopard on a virtual machine with
Virtualbox, which is great practice for installing Mac OS X on your
actual computer. That guide focused on the legal method of
Hackintoshing, which is to use a retail Snow Leopard installation DVD.
However, there's no way to install a retail copy of Mac OS X Lion on
Virtualbox, unless you already own a Mac (which is a totally
unreasonable requirement). If you want to install Lion on a virtual
machine in Windows, you'll have to take a different approach: distros.
For the unacquainted, distros are pirated copies of Mac OS X that have been modified to work with normal computers. Right now, using a distro is the only practical method for getting Mac OS X Lion to run a virtual machine in Windows.
To install Mac OS X Lion on a virtual machine, we're going to use
Virtualbox, which is a free and open-source virtualization suite. It's
important to note that Windows virtualization programs do not
"officially" support Mac OS X, so you will not be able to enable full
graphics support. This tutorial should only be taken as a proof of
concept.
Computer Requirements
You need a computer with Windows to run Mac OS X on Windows (of course).
The "System Type" of your copy of Windows needs to be 64-bit, because
Mac OS X Lion is a 64-bit operating system. If you have a 32-bit copy of
Windows, you can only install Mac OS X Snow Leopard on Virtualbox.
You will need at least 4 GB of RAM and a dual-core (two core) processor
or better. Personally, the computer I was using for this had a 4-core
processor and 12 GB RAM, which is way more than enough. You also need
about 10 GB of unused hard drive space.
Right click on "My Computer" on your desktop and click "Properties" to
check the stats on your computer. If it doesn't directly tell you how
many cores your processor has, look up your processor model on Wikipedia
or Google. You also want to find out whether your processor is made by
"Intel" or "AMD". Computers with AMD processors will not work with Lion. If
you have a computer with an AMD processor, and you want to install Mac
OS X in a virtual machine, you will have to settle with installing Mac OS X Snow Leopard.
General Requirements
- Virtualbox : This virtualization suite is free, and though it doesn't offer official support for Mac OS X, it works well enough.
- iAtkos : This is a popular distro of Mac OS X Lion. I won't go into details, but you can download it from just about any bittorrent website by using a bittorrent client (it's about 4 GB in size). Unlike the retail version of Lion, you don't have to use a boot CD like iBoot to start the Mac OS X installer.
You don't have to use iAtkos; all distros and "bootable" versions of Mac
OS X Lion do essentially the same thing. All of these distros will be
downloaded as ISO files or DMG files, which are DVD images. Be sure not
to download a VMWare Image of Lion, as those versions don't work with
Virtualbox.
Step 1: Prep
Step 1: Prep
Download Virtualbox,
install it, and open it up. Also, if you want to be able to view USB
devices from your Mac OS X Lion virtual machine, download the Virtualbox Extension Pack and run it before going to Step 2.
Step 2: Create a new virtual machine.
Virtualbox lets you run Mac OSX within Windows by creating a virtual
machine, which is a program that simulates a normal computer. To create
a virtual machine, open up Virtualbox and click "New" on the upper
left. Give your new virtual machine a name, and choose "Mac OS X Server
(64-bit)" for the OS Type.
Be sure to choose 64-bit and not 32-bit, because Mac OS X Lion only works with 64-bit. Choosing 32-bit will result in a critical "Guru Meditation" error later on.
Be sure to choose 64-bit and not 32-bit, because Mac OS X Lion only works with 64-bit. Choosing 32-bit will result in a critical "Guru Meditation" error later on.
I recommend assigning at least 2 GB of RAM to the virtual machine, but
you can assign as little as 1024 MB of RAM. Every time you turn on Mac
OS X, that RAM that you assign here will be used to run the virtual
machine. The RAM will be given back to your normal computer after you
turn Virtualbox off.
You'll need to create a new hard disk for the virtual machine.
Virtualbox will ask you what type of disk you want to create: VDI, VDMK,
or VHD. VDI is the original format for Virtualbox, while VDMK is the
format used by VMWare. If you're considering getting a copy of VMWare,
you might want to choose VDMK. Otherwise, just choose VDI. I recommend
creating a dynamically expanding disk; the only other option, fixed-size
storage, will eat up your hard drive.
Step 3: Give your new virtual machine an operating system.
Your virtual machine will now be created. But don't stop now--you still
need to change a few settings before your machine will actually work.
Your new virtual machine will show up on the left column of the
Virtualbox start page. Select your Mac OS X virtual machine
(single-click) from the main page of Virtualbox, and open up the virtual
machine settings. Once the settings open up, go to "System" and uncheck
the "Enable EFI" box. This is by far the most important single setting
that you will need to change.
EFI, which stands for Extended Firmware Interface, is a feature that
helps operating systems start up. Unfortunately, Mac OSX requires
'speshul' EFI, so the EFI that Virtualbox uses doesn't work.
In addition, make sure that "Enable IO APIC" is checked. Then, click on
the "Acceleration" tab and check both of the options there. I'm not sure
whether these options actually matter (EFI is definitely the most
important variable), but it's better safe than sorry.
Once you're done with that, go to the settings for "Storage". In the
storage tree box, you'll see a CD icon labeled "Empty". Click on it and
click "Choose a virtual CD/DVD disk file". In the window that pops up,
choose the .iso or .dmg file for iAtkos (or whichever distro you
downloaded).
Step 4: Install Mac OS X Lion
Start up your virtual machine. You should come up to a screen with the black-and-white picture of the iAtkos Lion.
After ejecting the iAtkos CD, restart your virtual machine again. Now, at the bootup screen, you'll see an icon for the hard drive where you installed Lion. Select it (use the arrow keys on your computer) and press "Enter". Lion will boot, and you should eventually be led to the Mac OS X setup screen. Fill it out, then mission accomplished!
Step 5: Make the screen bigger.
Though this step is optional, I still recommend you do it anyways.
When you first use your Mac OSX, you'll probably notice one thing: your
screen resolution is 1024x768. Since Virtualbox doesn't "technically"
support Mac OS X, there's no official way to change this. But here's how
you can change it anyways:
Open up Finder and go to the folder "Extras" in the main hard drive, and
open the file org.Chameleon.boot.plist. Between <dict> and
</dict> in the file, insert the following line.
<key>Graphics Mode</key>
<string>1280x1024x32</string>
Once you've saved it, reboot. Your resolution will increase to 1280x1024.
Step 6: Turn off updates.
First, an important note: DO NOT UPDATE NORMALLY. This is a golden rule
of Hackintoshing, and it applies to virtual machines running Mac OS X
too.
Anyways, Mac OS X is set to automatically update itself. This is bad. To
turn off automatic updates, click on the Apple icon in the upper left
hand corner of Mac OS X, go to System Preferences, and then click on
"Software Update". Uncheck the box that says "Check for Updates".
Recap
I'll just repeat what I said in my Snow Leopard guide. Installing Mac OS X on a virtual machine is excellent practice for the real thing: installing Mac OS X on your actual computer. Don't get too comfortable, though. Compared to most computers, Virtualbox virtual machines are very "vanilla", meaning that they're very compatible with Mac OS X in the first place. After all, sound and ethernet work from the start. You can't count on being that lucky with a real PC.
And even if you don't plan on doing this for real, with a Hackintosh, it's still a really cool thing to try out over the weekend.
Thanks,
ReplyDeleteMine crashes on every reboot/shutdown and for some reason VB does not allow more than 256mb VRam, so full screen mode at 1920x1200 is not possible.