How to Install Fully Functional Mac OS X Lion Virtual Machine inside Windows 7

UPDATE*** Tested and confirmed that the free version of VMware Player works just as good as VMware Workstation. ***UPDATE Oct 2nd 2011*** Updated broken link for VMware unlocker, added Audio / Sound driver for VMware Mac OS X Lion To start, here are the following tools and items you need to have:

VMware Workstation 7.1+ (get the latest version) or even better free version of VMware Player will work as well Download the Mac OS X VMware unlocker and other helper (***VMware unlocker link updated***) Download the Audio / Sound driver for VMware Mac OS X Lion if you want to get audio working as well (thanks to Manas commentator) Download the bootable Mac OS X Lion bootable vmdk (find it on Google should be around 4.12GB in size) At least 4GB of RAM At least 40 GB of Hard Drive space

Make sure you have the above tool ready, after youve installed VMware workstation run the Mac OS X VMware unlocker

Pick a location to extract the file. Go to the location youve just extracted the file. should be something like this \Mac OS X Lion VMware Files\VMware Unlocker Mac OS X Guest shift + right click on the folder VMware Workstation Unlocker Windows to Open command window here

Run windows.bat command

When this is done you should see something like the above screenshot. Now navigate back to the folder \Mac OS X Lion VMware Files\Mac OS X Lion find the named Mac OS X Lion.vmx and double click.

This will open the VMware Workstation, you should see something like the following

Now click Edit virtual machine settings

Here you want to add a new hard disk which will contain the vmdk youve just downloaded. Click Add.. select Hard Disk Click next

Select Use an existing virtual disk

Browse and find the vmdk file, click Open

Click Finish when you done. The reason you want to add another hard drive is that in the original setting, the 40GB has no OS on it, therefore VMware will try to boot off the OS from the second disk (the vmdk file) which will load and boot into Lion Installer.

Now back to the main menu, click Power on the virtual machine From now here just following the on screen instruction to install Mac OS X Lion. Should be pretty straight forward. When you done installing Mac OS X Lion on the Virtual Machine, go download the VMware tools inside the new Mac OS X Lion

Double click Install VMware Tools

After you finish installing the VMware tools, reboot the machine now you should have native screen resolutions.

From now on, its highly suggested to take a snapshot of the working VM. Incase in the future you done anything that messed up the machine you can always rollback to previous working state with the save of snapshot. From this moment on, you can also remove the second hard drive (the bootable Lion installer vmdk file) that youve added to the VM earlier. You should be able to install the 10.7.1 update without an issue.

Optional Enable VMware Shared Folder

After youve had a fully working Lion you can enable the VMware share folder to your Windows 7 host machine. So this way the VM will have access to your Windows 7 file. To do this, go to the Virtual Machine Settings when it was powered off.

Go under options tab, select Shared Folders Pick Always enable and click OK

Go Browse.. the folder that you wish to share to.

From here you can pick and choose to make the folder to be Read-only or Enable this share

Thats all there is. Finish the wizard and power on the VM again you should now see the mount folder on your Lion desktop that points to your Windows 7 shared folder. Happy Virtual Machine !