MacOS – Rosetta stopped working in a virtualized Snow Leopard hosted in Mavericks (Parallels or Virtualbox)

macosrosettasnow leopardvirtualization

I have successfully installed Snow Leopard in a VirtualBox on my Macbook Pro Retina Early 2013 (running OS X Mavericks).

While I can start the virtualized Snow Leopard in Oracle's Virtualbox or Parallels, I have no luck starting any Rosetta Application from within Snow Leopard. This happens even after a fresh install of Snow Leopard before any updates.
All Rosetta applications fail to start or even to be install.

Anyone know a configuration which allows using Rosetta in a virtualized Snow Leopard Environment?

The software versions I am using:

  • Virtualbox Versions: 4.1, 5.0, 5.1
  • Parallels Version: 8

Best Answer

it turned out that the type of the hard disk I initially chose for installing Snow Leopard on matters. So, when creating the virtual hard disk drive in VirtualBox, selecting a "hdd" Parallels type file, was the key. I tried with VDI, and VMDK (VMware) but all installations with these lead to a sucessful install of Snow Leopard, but a non-functioning Rosetta.

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