Running a virtual Mac on my souped-up PC.

[muguk]

Now I've got a bit of more powerful beast of a PC to use at home, I've found that there's a few articles on Lifehacker explaining how to set up a full install of Mountain Lion as well as Mavericks in a Virtual PC.  So long as you're running a 64-bit Windows as that's what either of these Mac OS X needs.  You will also need a spare pendrive as you need to write a special bootable image to it.

Mountain Lion: http://lifehacker.com/5938332/how-to-run-mac-os-x-on-any-windows-pc-using-virtualbox

Mavericks: http://lifehacker.com/the-always-up-to-date-guide-to-building-a-hackintosh-o-5841604

If you're just starting to mess with Virtual machines, then try this guide (also on Lifehacker): http://lifehacker.com/the-power-users-guide-to-better-virtual-machines-in-vir-1569943402


I'll keep this thread updated with my progress (going to go straight to Mavericks).

[muguk]

Well, the first attempt failed at the very first hurdle.  The guide says to select the 64-Bit option for the Virtual Mac ... and VirtualBox doesn't give me that option, despite it running on a 64-Bit Windows 8 OS.  Hmmm .. more thinking and tinkering needed

[flibblesan]

I ended up using VMWare for running OS X.  Just needed to use the "Mac OS X Unlocker for VMware" from http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/files/file/20-vmware-unlocker-for-os-x/ then everything else worked as expected.  This is on Intel CPU though and I believe on AMD systems you have to mess about with various AMD patched and kernels even when running under a virtual machine.

[muguk]

Cheers for the extra option, Fibblesan.

I won't have much time to fiddle with it until next week now, but I'll have another go with the files I've already downloaded.  If Mavericks doesn't work, I'll try Mountain Lion instead.

Then if this still gives me grief, I'll try your method but with the AMD options being needed as I no longer have an Intel-based machine.

[muguk]

Had another go yesterday morning.   Got DOS/Windows for Workgroups set up easily enough.  But that would be classed as cheating because there was already a VHD image of it available online and you just import it into the settings.

Windows 98 seemed to set up correctly but after the first (virtual) reboot it started complaining about the lack of RAM in my virtual machine.  Not tried Windows XP as of yet, but that's next on the 'To Do' list.

However, I still cannot get a 64-bit version of Mac OS/X as an option, only 32-bit options are available.   I'm running Windows 8.1 (64-bit) with 16gb of RAM - ergo, I have got the correct specs to do this.  I've also ensured that I have installed the relevant extensions that VirtualBox suggests but cannot seem to get any further.

Guess I'd better find a VirtualBox forum and start reading up more.   Only setting this up so Eleanor can still use her Mac apps (*) when she's visiting my place.


(*) including some game with pirates in it that she plays constantly on her ancient MacBook!