How to install OS X Mountain Lion in Virtualbox with Hackboot

Computer Requirements

You need a computer with Windows to run Mac OS X on Windows (of course). The "System Type" of your copy of Windows needs to be 64-bit, because OS X Mountain Lion is a 64-bit operating system. If you have a 32-bit copy of Windows, you can only install Mac OS X Snow Leopard on Virtualbox. You will need at least 4 GB of RAM and a dual-core (two core) processor or better. Personally, the computer I was using for this had a 4-core processor and 12 GB RAM, which is way more than enough. You also need about 10 GB of unused hard drive space.

Right click on "My Computer" on your desktop and click "Properties" to check the stats on your computer. If it doesn't directly tell you how many cores your processor has, look up your processor model on Wikipedia or Google. You also want to find out whether your processor is made by "Intel" or "AMD"

General Requirements

Virtualbox : This virtualization suite is free, and though it doesn't offer official support for Mac OS X, it works well enough.

Mountain Lion bootable DVD : Unfortunately, the standard method for installing OS X Mountain Lion on PCs (which uses a paid copy of the Mountain Lion installer) doesn't work with Virtualbox. Instead, you'll have to rely on pirated "bootable DVD" copies of Mountain Lion, also known as "distros". I won't go into details, but you can download these copies from about any bittorrent website by using a bittorrent client (it's about 4.5 GB in size). In the past, we've used the iAtkos distro for this, but iAtkos hasn't updated for Mountain Lion yet, so I used the "OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion bootable DVD for Intel PCs", by Olarila.

Hackboot 1 / Hackboot 2: Even though it's called a "bootable DVD", the Olarila version of OS X Mountain Lion still can't boot in Virtualbox by itself. To help Mountain Lion start, you'll need to use Olarila's Hackboot CD. There are three different versions of Hackboot; we'll need to use two of them in this guide. "Hackboot 1" is for starting the Mountain Lion installer, while "Hackboot" 2 is for starting Mountain Lion itself.

Multibeast 4.6.1 : You will need to use Multibeast 4.6.1, our favorite Hackintosh post-installation tool, to set up the Mountain Lion virtual machine after the initial installation. While Multibeast 4.6.1 is an old version designed for Mac OS X Lion instead of Mountain Lion, in our case, it actually works better than newer versions of Multibeast. Registration is required on the tonymacx86 website to download this.

Step 1: Prep

Download Virtualbox, install it, and open it up. Also, if you want to be able to view USB devices from your OS X Mountain Lion virtual machine, download the Virtualbox Extension Pack and run it before going to Step 2.

Step 2: Create a new virtual machine.

Virtualbox lets you run Mac OSX within Windows by creating a virtual machine, which is a program that simulates a normal computer. To create a virtual machine, open up Virtualbox and click "New" on the upper left. Give your new virtual machine a name, and choose "Mac OS X" for the OS Type.
If your version of Virtualbox asks you to choose between 64-bit and 32-bit, be sure to choose 64-bit. Choosing 32-bit will result in a critical "Guru Meditation" error later on.

I recommend assigning 4 GB of RAM to the virtual machine, but you can assign as little as 2 GB of RAM. Every time you turn on Mac OS X, that RAM that you assign here will be used to run the virtual machine. The RAM will be given back to your normal computer after you turn Virtualbox off.

You'll need to create a new hard disk for the virtual machine. Virtualbox will ask you what type of disk you want to create: VDI, VDMK, or VHD. VDI is the original format for Virtualbox, while VDMK is the format used by VMWare. If you're considering getting a copy of VMWare, you might want to choose VDMK. Otherwise, just choose VDI. I recommend creating a dynamically expanding disk; the only other option, fixed-size storage, will eat up your hard drive.

Step 3: Give your new virtual machine an operating system.

Your virtual machine will now be created. But don't stop now--you still need to change a few settings before your machine will actually work. Your new virtual machine will show up on the left column of the Virtualbox start page. Select your Mac OS X virtual machine (single-click) from the main page of Virtualbox, and open up the virtual machine settings. Once the settings open up, go to "System" and uncheck the "Enable EFI" box. This is by far the most important single setting that you will need to change.

EFI, which stands for Extended Firmware Interface, is a feature that helps operating systems start up. Unfortunately, Mac OSX requires 'speshul' EFI, so the EFI that Virtualbox uses doesn't work.

Once you're done with that, go to the settings for "Storage". In the storage tree box, you'll see a CD icon labeled "Empty". Click on it and click "Choose a virtual CD/DVD disk file". In the window that pops up, choose the .iso file for Hackboot 1 (download below).

DOWNLOAD: Hackboot 1

This way, when your virtual machine starts for the first time, it will boot into Hackboot.

Step 4: Install OS X Mountain Lion

Start up your virtual machine. You will come up to the Hackboot boot screen, with a CD icon labeled "HackBoot" in the middle. Don't do anything yet.

Your mouse cursor will probably be trapped inside the virtual machine. Press the right "Ctrl" key on your keyboard to allow your mouse to escape. Then, at the bottom right of the virtual machine screen, right-click on the little CD icon, and click "Choose a virtual CD/DVD disk file". A Windows Explorer window will pop up; from there, select the OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion bootable DVD.

Click back into the Hackboot screen, and press the "F5" key on your keyboard. This will refresh Hackboot. The CD icon in the middle of the Hackboot screen will now say "OS X Install DVD". Press the enter key on your keyboard. You will then enter the Mac OS X installer page.

Continue, and you will eventually come up to a page that asks you for a "destination" for your Mac install. Oh no, the page is blank! We'll have to fix that. To do this, start up Disk Utility (located under the Utilities menu).

Mac OSX can only be installed on a completely clean disk, so you need to use Disk Utility to wipe your Virtualbox hard disk. Click on the Virtualbox hard disk in Disk Utility and erase it. Don't worry, there's nothing important on it.