Use Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion on PC with VMware Image – Simple Steps

VMware and VirtualBox made Hackintosh easy by allowing us to use them simultaneously as a virtual machine on the same host computer. In this post, we will talk about how to use the preinstalled VMware image of OS X 10.8 on a Windows OS physical computer.

The preinstalled image and Torrent file we talk about in this article was created by a separate team called souldevteam back in the year 2012. Unoftuntily, the website and team are not active anymore to download the file from their website.  Mountain Lion OS X is an outdated Apple OS. There are many other latest versions available, we covered them here. It is highly recommended to use the latest releases except you have some special requirements to test the OS X 10.8 currently.

This method is completely for testing and learning purposes only.

Prerequisites to Use OS X10.8 Mountain VMware Image on Windows

1) Hardware Virtualization Technology (VT) enabled processor. Most of the recent computers support these features built-in.

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

3) Latest VMware workstation.

Steps to Follow

1) Download ‘Mountain Lion 10.8 Retail VMware Image’  by souldevteam  – It is a torrent file, so search for this file from your favourite search engine.

2) Use the 7z program to unzip it. After extraction, the size should be around 6.2 GB

Extracting the pre-installed image

3) Check and make sure your physical computer supports Hardware Virtualization Technology (VT). 

4) Use the VMware unlocker, which is available with downloads to patch the existing VMware workstation application. Use the correct version of unlocker. Read more about how to use VMware unlocker to get mac OS guest support.

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

mac os x guest OS after patch

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

open the VMX file

6) That should open the pre-installed Mountain Lion virtual machine configuration. Before powering it on, you can modify the processor and RAM settings depending on available hardware resources. I increased the RAM size to 2GB and the number of processor cores to 2 since I had core2duo physical processor.

changing settings

7) Power on the virtual machine now. If all settings are correct, the Mac OS X 10.8 virtual machine will start with the initial setup screen as shown below.

initial language selection screen After completing the initial configurations, you should land on the mountain lion OS X desktop without any issues.

I recommend taking a snapshot now before proceeding further.

Install VMware Tools on Mac OS X 10.8

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

working network and sound

To get more screen resolutions, VMware shared folders and slightly better performance, we need to install VMware tools.

8) Browse and load the darwin.iso file to the virtual machine’s CD/DVD drive. Darwin.iso is located at the same extracted place.

loaded darwin.iso

Once it is loaded to CD/DVD drive, the virtual machine will automatically detect open the content as below.

Vmware Tools content

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

For some reason, VMware tools installation failed on the Mountain Lion virtual machine, but nothing to worry about it. Press close and restart the virtual machine manually.

failed vmware tools installation

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

more screen options after vm tools

VMware Shared Folders on Mountain Lion 10.8 and Windows OS

If you like to transfer files between Mac OS X guest and Windows hosts frequently without any types of networking connectivity or 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 (or 10/8.1) host OS through VMware shared folders from guest VM. That will enable the data to transfer back and forth easily without setting up a network or any shares.

To configure VMware shared folders, go to the virtual machine’s settings and enable folder sharing. Then, add the partition or folder of the Windows host.

vmware shared folders settings Wait for a few minutes to mount this drive or folder inside Mountain Lion virtual machine.

You will find a new drive under the computer on Mac OS X. By opening the drive you can access Windows OS files and folders from Mac OS.

shared folder disk Depending on the mode you selected (whether read-only or write access), you can save the data too.

mounted shared drive This is the fast and easy method to transfer files and folders between Mac OS X 10.8 guest and Windows host machines. I hope this guide is helpful to find out how to use the pre-installed VMware image of Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion on a Windows Operating System.

If any of the above solutions did not fix the Windows PC issues, we recommend downloading the below PC repair tool to identify and solve any PC Issues.

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.

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

  1. Works fine to me! Thanks for this great share!

    Windows 7 Ultimate, 64-bit 6.1.7601, Service Pack 1
    i5 quadcore – 4Gb Ram
    VMWare 8.0.0 build-471780
    Hardware virtualization supported
    Fixer to MacOS run into VMWare

    Running from USB driver.

    Thanks again!!!!

    • Hi I can use it on my system ?? I have only i3 2 core 3.3 Ghz 4gb memory and nvidia gt 630.. Please reply immediately !!!

      • Yeah, you absolutely can, I’m using it on a Core 2 Duo P8700 which is 3 years old, with 4gb memory specially for the Mac VM and an Ati HD Radeon 4650. But my point is that I have a sound problem to fix now.

    • How is the performance of your OS X 10.8 Virtual Machine on your Intel i5 cpu? I couldn’t get OS X 10.8 to run on my AMD E2 450 dual core cpu laptop, however my first OS X 10.4.3 VM I created back in 2005 runs in Vmware with out the patch, and with the unlocker patch.

    • Yeah, you absolutely can. Get some Virtual Machine to use it. I think you can’t work for dual booting b’cause your using HP.

      • can i convert this vmdk file into .ISO format ,so that i format my laptop and install single mac os x? ..o ranyother way to increase the speed without changing the virtual machine?

  2. i have installed this mac os x 10.8 mountain lion version..But the OS is very slow.even opening an itunes takes so much time…

    My specifications are,

    HP,i5 processor.

    i allocated 3gb ram memory for mac but still its slow ..how to resolve this?
    pls help me

  3. I have VM Worksation 9.0.0 build-812388, is there an unlocker for this build?

    I also have a usb install for Mountain Lion, is there any way to use this to create the vmx file or should I just download the torrent?

    thanks…

  4. Hi. Can I resize the hard disk of this image? 150 is too much for me, I`ve already change ram and the number of cores but I cant choose the size of the hard disk…

    Thanks from Spain!

  5. Since Apple has discontinued the 17 inch laptop, which 17 inch Windows computer would be a good buy to strip down and just install MacOS10.8, Yes it would be more permanent or as permanent as systems are. I am thinking this would be a better move then waiting or buying into a discontinued 17inch mac laptop. Not interested in iTunes , just using imaging software, and I detest windows of any number which is why I would not use it even if available.
    Thanks

  6. I am using

    — 32 bit win 7
    — vm workstation 8
    — intel processor …with no VT support

    I had applied the hard virtulization crack..and it worked

    But when I power on the virtual machine..get msg

    “This virtual machine is configured for 64-bit guest operating systems. However, 64-bit operation is not possible.
    This host does not support VT.
    For more detailed information, see http://vmware.com/info?id=152.
    Continue without 64-bit support?”

    \\\\\\\\\ I hit yes or no any thing it just shuts down \\\\\\.

    I tried many diff ways to get it fixed…but nothing seems to working…please help

    In my vmware tools…I see a file named darwin.iso
    which I didn’t use..and I am not sure where to use..may be this file has some this to do with this error..so please guide me..

  7. I am using

    — 32 bit win 7
    — vm workstation 8
    — intel processor …with no VT support

    I had applied the hard virtulization crack..and it worked

    But when I power on the virtual machine..get msg

    “This virtual machine is configured for 64-bit guest operating systems. However, 64-bit operation is not possible.
    This host does not support VT.
    For more detailed information, see http://vmware.com/info?id=152.
    Continue without 64-bit support?”

    \\\\\\\\\ I hit yes or no any thing it just shuts down \\\\\\.

    I tried many diff ways to get it fixed…but nothing seems to working…please help

    In my vmware tools…I see a file named darwin.iso
    which I didn’t use..and I am not sure where to use..may be this file has some this to do with this error..so please guide me..
    Thanks

    • having the same problem here, seems this vmk files is just for 64bit, can you please provide an option to work with 32bit pc, actually I changed the option with no 64bit into the setting but not run either. where to download a fresh copy from mac to install in 32 bit.?

      thanks

  8. would it work on HP pavilion dv6 with AMD A6 processor quadcore and 6 GB ram = radeon dual core graphics
    and plz include the best setting i shld apply

  9. Hi! Worked perfectly the first time. Your guide was fantastic.

    I have one question: Are you able to update or will it mess things up?

    Thanks for the great guide!

    • Yes, it works. Have just set up a new OS X VM. Survived the OS X update.

      Finally found a working VMWare OS X image, my life becomes much easier. Thank you very much guys!

  10. While opening the mac os file through vm ware workstation, it shows ”EFI Vmware virtual cdrom drive (IDE 1:0).. unsuccessful” ”EFI unsuccessful””. please help. Thanks.

  11. Sorry, the second one shows ”EFI Network…”

    I have a dell XPS L502x running windows 7 64bit home premium. I followed each and every step precisely. but still not able to get there.

  12. Worked fine for me ^,^ Thank You!

    VMware Workstation 9 on Windows 8 Pro 64bit
    4GB DDR2 RAM, Core2Quad 2,5GHz

  13. Its Awosome men!
    I am From Pakistan ……….. n seraching this Solution for very long time …….. n Finally i got it men by your Help! you are Super!

  14. Works fine to me! Thanks for this great share!

    Windows 7 Professional, 64-bit , Service Pack 1
    Intel Core i7 / 8G Ram
    VMWare Player 5.0.0 build-812388
    Hardware virtualization supported

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