Possible to run Snow Leopard in a VM?

Discussion in 'Mac OS X Lion (10.7)' started by cnstoll, Jul 18, 2011.

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  1. cnstoll, Jul 18, 2011

    cnstoll macrumors 6502

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    #1
    Hey guys,

    I'm excited about Lion but I have a small problem. I would like to still be able to play Starcraft and Diablo 2 from time to time, which will no longer be possible because they require carbon to run.

    One solution I thought of was just keeping a version of 10.6 in a VM with either Parallels or VMWare Fusion to play them. Since they are fairly old games I am confident the performance overhead of a VM will not greatly affect them.

    So, my question is, is it possible to install an older version of Mac OS X in VMWare Fusion or Parallels?

    Thanks
     
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  2. labaom, Jul 18, 2011

    labaom macrumors member

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    #2
    I really don't see the point in upgrading to Lion if there are no good features.
     
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  3. Dhelsdon, Jul 18, 2011

    Dhelsdon macrumors 65816

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    #3
    I don't see why you couldn't.. might have some issues with setting up drivers though.
     
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  4. mrapplegate, Jul 18, 2011

    mrapplegate macrumors 68030

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    #4
    Yes. Or just keep a SL partition and run both.
     
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  5. cnstoll, Jul 18, 2011

    cnstoll thread starter macrumors 6502

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    #5
    Yeah that really didn't provide any useful information at all.

    Thanks to others that posted. I'll probably try a VM first or otherwise just keep a SL partition.
     
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  6. mdnz, Jul 18, 2011

    mdnz macrumors regular

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    #6
    The Snow Leopard license doesn't allow that, thus it won't work in either Parallels or Fusion (without some hacks).

    You can only use Snow Leopard server to legally virtualise Snow Leopard.
     
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  7. mrapplegate, Jul 18, 2011

    mrapplegate macrumors 68030

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    #7
    My bad, good catch mdnz, for some reason I thought it ran in VirtualBox. Minus the legal issues.
     
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  8. Steve.P.JobsFan, Jul 18, 2011

    Steve.P.JobsFan macrumors 6502a

    Steve.P.JobsFan

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    #8
    Really? I have Snow Leopard running in Virtualbox just fine. All you have to do is Select OS X Server in the VirtualBox window, slap in your SL DVD, and it works just fine.
     
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  9. mdnz, Jul 18, 2011

    mdnz macrumors regular

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    #9
    I didn't say it doesn't work, I said that it is against the Snow Leopard license to do so.
     
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  10. Madd the Sane, Jul 18, 2011

    Madd the Sane macrumors 6502a

    Madd the Sane

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    #10
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    Unless there are custom Mac OS X drivers, I wouldn't be surprised if there was no OpenGL acceleration under a VM.
     
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  11. hehe299792458, Jul 19, 2011

    hehe299792458 macrumors 6502a

    hehe299792458

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    #11
    Hmm... It didn't work for me - just sticking in the SL DVD and trying to install it in VMware
     
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  12. mdnz, Jul 19, 2011

    mdnz macrumors regular

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    #12
    Read my previous post... it's against the license to do so unless you apply some hacks. That's why VMWare won't boot a normal Snow Leo DVD without those hacks.
     
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  13. kasakka, Jul 19, 2011

    kasakka macrumors 68000

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    #13
    Why not just run Windows in VMWare? Would probably handle those games better.
     
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  14. maflynn, Jul 19, 2011

    maflynn Moderator

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    #14
    Its against the EULA to run 10.6 in a VM and vmware only will allow you to run OSX server (not the desktop osx). With that said, you can visit insanelymac which there are discussions in doing this.
     
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  15. dbam987, Jul 19, 2011

    dbam987 macrumors regular

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    #15
    OS X Lion allows running additional OS X instances (presumably of the Lion variety) as virtual machines using VMWare/Parallels. :D

    http://osxdaily.com/2011/07/02/mac-...onal-os-x-instances-within-a-virtual-machine/

    Wondering if I could take one of those images and run them virtually on a Windows host though. I bet that's against the EULA, but has anyone with one of the developer previews of Lion tried this anyway?
     
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