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Installing Snow Leopard (and Rosetta) into Parallels on modern Intel Macs
- Thread starter MichaelLAX
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Quick answer: I have no experience in using Parallels in this direction, so I cannot help you. Let us know if you find an authoritative answer to your question!
Hi Michael, I followed your guide this weekend, it is wonderful and I would like to add a few things:
First of all: the alternate step 1 that was recently posted does not seem to be a possibility through Mountain Lion (OS 10.8.2, SuperDrive, Early 2011 MBP). Specifically, Disk Utility provides no option to create a .sparseimage from the Snow Leopard disk. I attempted to use a sparse image created with DMGConverter (third party program). This failed to keep the image as a bootable drive.
The workaround I found to this was to install Snow Leopard as a partition on an older MBP (one without a previous bootcamp partition, it seems to be trickier to add partitions on a bootcamped drive), follow the entirety of step 1 in that Snow Leopard partition, transfer the .cdr to an external drive, then onto Mountain Lion. Once I had the altered .cdr, I was able to follow all of your steps and successfully create a virtual Snow Leopard. I did all of these steps on an early 2011 MBP running OS 10.8.2 with Parallels Build 8.0.18314 (not the most up-to-date parallels, I did update to the current build [different computer, don't have build number] and the .pvm still works). I copied this .pvm to an external drive and moved it over to an rMBP (same OS/build) and Snow Leopard is working on both machines.
For people trying to migrate Eudora (and possibly other files) from an old rosetta machine, read this:
My main goal with installing SL was to run Eudora (a mail client) in parallels by transferring my old Eudora mailboxes to my Mountain Lion machine from my Tiger (10.4.11) Machine via an external drive, keep the data on Mountain Lion and have Eudora read that data. All of my initial attempts to have Eudora correctly recognize my old files failed, these included reading files from my Mountain Lion machine (through Shared Folders [the network drive created by parallels]), from my external drive (through Shared Folders), and from my Tiger machine itself (through my home network). What I've concluded from all of these is that Parallels seems to lose metadata and resource information when reading from network drives.
Now, this probably isn't a problem for every application, but Eudora uses two mailbox systems, one is .mbox (decently common, one could resave the file as .mbox losing only minimal information). This other is a mixture of .mbx and .toc (Eudora's own mailbox and Table of Contents file types). One cannot simply resave a file as .mbx and .toc without expecting to lose some information (in fact, I found that with TextWrangler, I was able to resave some files as FILENAME.mbx and FILENAME.mbx.toc, Eudora could read these, but then would convert the mailbox into .mbox and remove the .toc, this solution didn't actually restore the files anyway).
If you don't read any other part of my post, this is what you need to know: If you want to transfer data from an older machine to parallels snow leopard, mount the disk that your data is on directly to snow leopard. To do this:
1. Unmount any drive you have previously mounted on your host
2. Remove that drive physically (pull out the USB connection).
3. Make sure your Virtual Machine is running
4. Re-insert the drive
5. Parallels 8 (probably 7 as well) will give you a graphical prompt asking where to mount the drive, choose the virtual machine.
6. Transfer data over.
Now, let's say that you want to keep your data on your host system (Mountain Lion in my case). This way, you have direct access to your files from your host while still allowing Eudora to read the data from the host, but as I said before, Eudora couldn't initially read data through Shared Folders. The steps to do this are:
7. Transfer the data (from step 6) to your host system through Shared Folders. This is the only time I would recommend using Shared Folders for data transferring without expecting to lose metadata/etc.
8. (Specifically Eudora) make an alias to your Eudora folder and place it on your guest where Eudora would expect its files to be (~/Documents/).
Doing this will allow you to keep your .pvm at ~14gb without having to constantly make new backups of it. It also means that you will have access to all your data on both host and guest.
Again, thank you so much for the guide Michael.
First of all: the alternate step 1 that was recently posted does not seem to be a possibility through Mountain Lion (OS 10.8.2, SuperDrive, Early 2011 MBP). Specifically, Disk Utility provides no option to create a .sparseimage from the Snow Leopard disk. I attempted to use a sparse image created with DMGConverter (third party program). This failed to keep the image as a bootable drive.
The workaround I found to this was to install Snow Leopard as a partition on an older MBP (one without a previous bootcamp partition, it seems to be trickier to add partitions on a bootcamped drive), follow the entirety of step 1 in that Snow Leopard partition, transfer the .cdr to an external drive, then onto Mountain Lion. Once I had the altered .cdr, I was able to follow all of your steps and successfully create a virtual Snow Leopard. I did all of these steps on an early 2011 MBP running OS 10.8.2 with Parallels Build 8.0.18314 (not the most up-to-date parallels, I did update to the current build [different computer, don't have build number] and the .pvm still works). I copied this .pvm to an external drive and moved it over to an rMBP (same OS/build) and Snow Leopard is working on both machines.
For people trying to migrate Eudora (and possibly other files) from an old rosetta machine, read this:
My main goal with installing SL was to run Eudora (a mail client) in parallels by transferring my old Eudora mailboxes to my Mountain Lion machine from my Tiger (10.4.11) Machine via an external drive, keep the data on Mountain Lion and have Eudora read that data. All of my initial attempts to have Eudora correctly recognize my old files failed, these included reading files from my Mountain Lion machine (through Shared Folders [the network drive created by parallels]), from my external drive (through Shared Folders), and from my Tiger machine itself (through my home network). What I've concluded from all of these is that Parallels seems to lose metadata and resource information when reading from network drives.
Now, this probably isn't a problem for every application, but Eudora uses two mailbox systems, one is .mbox (decently common, one could resave the file as .mbox losing only minimal information). This other is a mixture of .mbx and .toc (Eudora's own mailbox and Table of Contents file types). One cannot simply resave a file as .mbx and .toc without expecting to lose some information (in fact, I found that with TextWrangler, I was able to resave some files as FILENAME.mbx and FILENAME.mbx.toc, Eudora could read these, but then would convert the mailbox into .mbox and remove the .toc, this solution didn't actually restore the files anyway).
If you don't read any other part of my post, this is what you need to know: If you want to transfer data from an older machine to parallels snow leopard, mount the disk that your data is on directly to snow leopard. To do this:
1. Unmount any drive you have previously mounted on your host
2. Remove that drive physically (pull out the USB connection).
3. Make sure your Virtual Machine is running
4. Re-insert the drive
5. Parallels 8 (probably 7 as well) will give you a graphical prompt asking where to mount the drive, choose the virtual machine.
6. Transfer data over.
Now, let's say that you want to keep your data on your host system (Mountain Lion in my case). This way, you have direct access to your files from your host while still allowing Eudora to read the data from the host, but as I said before, Eudora couldn't initially read data through Shared Folders. The steps to do this are:
7. Transfer the data (from step 6) to your host system through Shared Folders. This is the only time I would recommend using Shared Folders for data transferring without expecting to lose metadata/etc.
8. (Specifically Eudora) make an alias to your Eudora folder and place it on your guest where Eudora would expect its files to be (~/Documents/).
Doing this will allow you to keep your .pvm at ~14gb without having to constantly make new backups of it. It also means that you will have access to all your data on both host and guest.
Again, thank you so much for the guide Michael.
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does this work in Snow Leopard?
Hi, I'm still running Snow Leopard because I've been afraid to upgrade to Lion or Mountain Lion. However I'm getting ready to upgrade, but I want to keep Snow Leopard around because of Quickbooks for Mac 2010. I'll have to upgrade Quickbooks if I upgrade my Mac OS so instead of twenty dollars, I'll have to spend two hundred and get another version of Quickbooks. I'd like to get Snow Leopard running in a virtual machine on Parallels 7 before then.
Do you know if the instructions provided will work if I'm running Snow Leopard, 10.6.8?
Hi, I'm still running Snow Leopard because I've been afraid to upgrade to Lion or Mountain Lion. However I'm getting ready to upgrade, but I want to keep Snow Leopard around because of Quickbooks for Mac 2010. I'll have to upgrade Quickbooks if I upgrade my Mac OS so instead of twenty dollars, I'll have to spend two hundred and get another version of Quickbooks. I'd like to get Snow Leopard running in a virtual machine on Parallels 7 before then.
Do you know if the instructions provided will work if I'm running Snow Leopard, 10.6.8?
Yes, it should work: and given the problems with this solution (and STEP ONE) being created in Mountain Lion, you are best off if you create the Parallels SL environment in Snow Leopard (install Quickbooks) and then upgrade to Mountain Lion.
NOTE: I have never attempted to install SL within SL, and I just presume it will work. Once it does work, be sure to upgrade to Mountain Lion soon afterwards, as operating SL within SL may be an EULA issue.
I do not know how Quickbooks accesses its data file; I presume just like any other Mac program. Keep the data file in your non-virtualized Mountain Lion environment (for proper backup with Time Machine or whatever backup solution you use) and access it within the Snow Leopard Parallels environment (using the Shared Folder).
I always recommend to not keep data in any virtualized environment, in case of a future crash.
Parallels 8 not getting shared folders ;-(
This thread has been excellent, it will be much more convenient that rebooting into Snow Leopard. I had no problems in getting SL working in a Parallels 8 virtual machine and I can now easily use an old scanner (first thing I tried installing <g>). Parallel Tools are installed and file sharing is enabled on both the master machine and in the Parallels machine, but I'm not seeing the shared folders. I've reinstalled Parallel Tools and there is no change. Similarly drag and drop is not working.
I have no problems with shared folders in other VMs such as with Windows XP.
I'm obviously missing something simple here (as there are posts mentioning using shared folders), but at the moment I'm stumped. Thanks in advance.
This thread has been excellent, it will be much more convenient that rebooting into Snow Leopard. I had no problems in getting SL working in a Parallels 8 virtual machine and I can now easily use an old scanner (first thing I tried installing <g>). Parallel Tools are installed and file sharing is enabled on both the master machine and in the Parallels machine, but I'm not seeing the shared folders. I've reinstalled Parallel Tools and there is no change. Similarly drag and drop is not working.
I have no problems with shared folders in other VMs such as with Windows XP.
I'm obviously missing something simple here (as there are posts mentioning using shared folders), but at the moment I'm stumped. Thanks in advance.
I wasn't sure how to make a .sparseimage in Mountain Lion - Disk Utility doesn't seem to want to do it - but if you have a .dmg of the SuperDrive in Mountain Lion you can do:
hdiutil convert SuperDrive.dmg -format UDSP SuperDrive
to get the .sparseimage and then proceed as above.
Blue screen hang.
So I've been successfully using Snow Leopard in a VM with the help of this thread for some time, now. When I try to boot the VM, it begins to load like it normally would. At the point in which it would normally move from the grey loading screen to the desktop, it hangs on a blue screen.
Any ideas?
So I've been successfully using Snow Leopard in a VM with the help of this thread for some time, now. When I try to boot the VM, it begins to load like it normally would. At the point in which it would normally move from the grey loading screen to the desktop, it hangs on a blue screen.
Any ideas?
This is a totally new problem for me.
Did anything unusual happen before this started to occur?
Maybe Parallels has some ability to flush its preferences; check their support forum.
Do you have the backup .pvm file I had you make at the end of the installation instructions? Does the problem happen if you double click this file?
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Yes: Note, as pointed out in the preliminary installation instructions, that STEP ONE must be created in Snow Leopard or Lion or use the sparse image approach in Mountain Lion for STEP ONE, as provided here; and
In STEP THREE #1: Parallels Tools is built into the main program in Parallels 8, so there is no need to install any ISO file as a CD/DVD, as instructed. Instead use: Update Parallels Tools from the Virtual Machine menu.
The backup copy runs just fine. Nothing crazy happened. I shut it down properly and it wouldn't open back up. it's not the end of the world if I can't open it back up. I'll lose a little bit of work but after my previous experiences, most everything was backed up. It would be nice to be able to recapture the last three hours worth of work that I did, though.
After a successful Installation?
Hi folks,
What a great thread! I now have a working Snow Leopard (SL) installation in Paralells 7. All went smoothly and I can now use the apps that haven't been updated for the post Rosetta environment. I just got one small question to resolve if someone can help?
After the installation I now have two images on my desktop the SuperDrive.cdr which is 7.77 Gb in size and I have a Bootcamp.dmg of 633 Mb there as well.
My question is simply, are these files essential for the SL installation to run or can I back them up to other media and get them off the hard drive of my MacBook Pro and still have the SL installation run OK?
Its just an issue of reclaiming approx 8Gb of hard drive space, so I 'd just like confirmation that removal of these files wont stuff up the SL Paralells set up.
Feedback would be greatly appreciated,
Cheers,
Andlestas
Hi folks,
What a great thread! I now have a working Snow Leopard (SL) installation in Paralells 7. All went smoothly and I can now use the apps that haven't been updated for the post Rosetta environment. I just got one small question to resolve if someone can help?
After the installation I now have two images on my desktop the SuperDrive.cdr which is 7.77 Gb in size and I have a Bootcamp.dmg of 633 Mb there as well.
My question is simply, are these files essential for the SL installation to run or can I back them up to other media and get them off the hard drive of my MacBook Pro and still have the SL installation run OK?
Its just an issue of reclaiming approx 8Gb of hard drive space, so I 'd just like confirmation that removal of these files wont stuff up the SL Paralells set up.
Feedback would be greatly appreciated,
Cheers,
Andlestas
Let me think about this while I get ready to return to Los Angeles Monday evening.
Do you follow my advice to not save data in the virtualized environment, but save it in Lion/Mt. Lion through the Shared Folder or file sharing? Do your PowerPC apps allow for this?
The SuperDrive.cdr file can be archived in a safe place (for future use if necessary) and removed from your current Mac and it will not affect Snow Leopard operation.
Bootcamp is not required for running Snow Leopard either. It is only used for running Windows, either directly, using the 'dual-boot' method, or concurrently in Parallels. This file must be a result of your using Bootcamp and/or Parallels to run Windows.
The app doesn't allow for this. I generally back it up, each time to the shared folder and another drive. This time, I shut down thinking that I was going to come back and finish the work in a half hour or so--hence, no reason to back up the work, or so I believed.
Notes 444. It's a psychotherapy note taking application. The database is stored in folder with other necessary files. Despite their promise of an upgrade to Lion, they abandoned ship. They continue to support Windows. So here I am. Running Snow Leopard in Parallels so that I can continue on.
problem solved
Michael,
While I was not able to fix the old VM, I did learn how to access it's hard drive and retrieve the data that I needed. Everything is updated and I'm back in business. Thank goodness for my dual backups.
Michael,
While I was not able to fix the old VM, I did learn how to access it's hard drive and retrieve the data that I needed. Everything is updated and I'm back in business. Thank goodness for my dual backups.
Keith: yes, I was on my way to the airport and could not get online to suggest you follow the Troubleshooting Step that would give you access to your damaged hard drive and copy out the data that you need...
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Try this Troubleshooting step to confirm that the file was properly created in the SuperDrive.pvr file.
Link me to the exact "modified step 1 for ML" instructions that you followed...
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