How to Install WOW and HB to a Mac using VMware Fusion.

[npittas]

Here?s a ?brief? guide on how to set up VMWare Fusion to run WOW and HB on a Mac

What you need:

• Any Mac with an Intel processor
• 1GB of RAM, 2GBrecommended
• 700MB of free disk space for VMware Fusion, and at least 5GB of free disk space for each virtual machine
• Mac OSX version 10.5.8 Leopard or later, or 10.6.3 Snow Leopard or later
• Operating system installation CD/DVD or disk image for virtual machines.

Lets Start!

1. Download VMware Fusion from the VMware Web site at VMware Fusion: Run Windows on Mac for Desktop Virtualization.
   The VMware Fusion disk image has a full version and a light version. The full version has the VMware Tools suite of utilities for all supported operating systems, and the light version has VMware Tools for Windows and Mac OS X Server only, with additional VMware Tools downloadable on demand.
   
2. Mount it
   
3. Double-click the Install VMware Fusion icon to start the Installation Assistant, and follow its instructions.
   
4. Enter your serial number.
   
5. If you do not have a serial number, click Get Serial Number to go to the VMware Web site, where you can purchase a VMware Fusion serial number. You can continue without entering a serial number, but you cannot power on a virtual machine until you enter a valid serial number. Enter your serial number by selecting VMware Fusion > Buy Now or Enter License. Using a *****ed Version of VMWare Fusion is beyond the purpose of this guide.
   
6. Click Yes to participate, or No if you do not want to participate in the User Experience Improvement Program? dialog.
   
7. Click Install.
   
8. In the Applications folder, double-click VMware Fusion.
   
9. Create a Windows virtual machine using Windows Easy Install
   
10. Insert your Windows CD/DVD into your optical drive, or mount the ISO with your preferred version of Windows.
    
11. Select File > New. The New Virtual Machine Assistant starts.
    
12. In the Introduction panel, ensure that Install this operating system is selected, and click Continue.
    
13. In the Windows Easy Install panel, enter your Display Name or Account Name, Password (optional), and Windows Product Key.
    The entry in the Display Name field (Windows XP and earlier) appears in information boxes as the name your Windows software is registered to. It is not the Windows user name. The entry in the Password field is the password for the windows administrator account only. VMware does not provide the Windows Product Key. It is in the packaging for the Windows operating system CD/DVD.
    
14. In the Integration panel, indicate how the new virtual machine should handle basic file sharing.
    
    ​
    a. More Seamless.
    
    ​
    VMware Fusion shares your Mac?s documents and applications with Windows. Files on your Mac that Windows supports open in Windows.
    
    ​
    b. More Isolated.
    
    ​
    VMware Fusion does not share your Mac?s documents and applications with Windows.
    
15. In the Finish panel, click Finish.
    
16. VMware Fusion installs Windows. This process can take up to 45 minutes. After installing Windows, VMware Fusion installs VMware Tools and powers on the virtual machine.
    
17. Power off your Virtual Machine
    
18. Select ?Settings? under Virtual Machine menu
    
19. In the Settings windows, click ?Display?
    
20. Check ?Accelerate 3D Graphics? if it?s not checked
    
21. In the Virtual Machine Menu, choose ?Network -> NAT?. This will isolate your Virtual Machine?s Networking by creating a vpn between your native OSX installation and your Virtual Windows Installation. You can also choose Bridged in case you have any kind of problems connecting to your WOW account. Keep in mind that for the world beyond your local network you always use your routers IP. You are, therefore, not protected from IP Bans, just because you use a Virtual Machine!
    
22. Download and install .NET, latest version of DirectX and any other software required for HB to work properly.
    
23. Set your windows Appearance Settings to the lowest available, so you have more resources for WOW
    
24. Install World of Warcraft and Update to the latest Patch.
    
25. Download and Install HB
    
26. Power on your Virtual Machine
    
27. Start World of Warcraft and set the resolution to something between 800x600 to 1280x960
    
28. Set the effects to low settings so you can have a better fps response
    
29. Start HB and configure it to your liking
    
30. Start botting to your new Windows Virtual Machine!!!!
    
31. Continue Playing WOW from your OSX as normal

Keep in Mind, that, you are using your Mac?s Memory and processing power to run yet another PC. This means that the performance is going to be degraded for both OS?s. The more memory you have the better. If you need tips on configuring the Virtual Machine?s memory for a better overall performance you can ask here, and I will try to help as much as I can.

The guide is for the latest version of VMWare Fusion.
I used the online documentation and my personal experience to compose it so credits go also to the creators of the online docs from the VMware official site.

 

[uiop]

Nice guide. This is the same setup I am using. Do you think Blizzard can tell we are running through VMWare or are they just seeing that we're running Windows. I ran a check back when I was using parallels (another VM software) and the VM has a different MAC address than my mac, so if they do a ban for all accounts on the computer with that MAC address, but I'd imagine I'd be safe from that. As you mentioned though, same IP but in the last Glider banwave I lost my bot account but kept my main account due to it being run on a virtual machine.

 

[Apoc]

Nice guide. This is the same setup I am using. Do you think Blizzard can tell we are running through VMWare or are they just seeing that we're running Windows. I ran a check back when I was using parallels (another VM software) and the VM has a different MAC address than my mac, so if they do a ban for all accounts on the computer with that MAC address, but I'd imagine I'd be safe from that. As you mentioned though, same IP but in the last Glider banwave I lost my bot account but kept my main account due to it being run on a virtual machine.

Yes, they can tell. No, they don't really care.

 

[npittas]

I'm using vmware due to its better implementation of 2d/3d acceleration. I can only wish that warden gets confused by the virtual machine's NAT but its a long shot and surely nothing to keep your hopes up, since Fusion tries it's best to make the networking completely transparent for any program running in the OS. The mac address can be easily spoofed in windows also so unless bliz techs aren't in a ban spree there shouldn't be much of a concern. But it's surely feels a bit safer to bot through vmware and at the same time play your main from OSX. I have never lost an account playing that way from OSX. But that could only be a speculation since I have been caught in last year's banwave and my account from vmware was ok but the one from the pc was banned.

 

[mrethan]

so im guessing this is assuming someone has purchased a valid windows operating system?
and does it require you buy the vmware fusion serial no?

 

[Anduril]

Why don't you just use Bootcamp? Seems easier to me, at least that's what i did...

 

[npittas]

so im guessing this is assuming someone has purchased a valid windows operating system?
and does it require you buy the vmware fusion serial no?

Yes and yes
VMware Fusion is 80$ if I remember correct.

Why don't you just use Bootcamp? Seems easier to me, at least that's what i did...

I use Virtualisation for different reasons than just play WOW.
You can have your OSX version of WOW to play, and use your bot through VMWare.
That kind of config dedicates specific Resources to the VMware Client (aka windows) and your WOW clients are completely independent from each other's memory.
With that setup you have better resource management and dedicated Windows setups per WOW client if you please.
You can have one VMware client for Botting only, another for using other windows applications, a third for programming CCs and plugins with Visual Studio, and another for a private WOW server, all completely independent from each other. Like having 4 different PCs in one.
And you can run them and configure them as you see fit, without using different partitions/drives, without bootcamp's limitations, and you can easily re-install everything from scratch in less than 20 minutes, by using Snapshots of each OS.

It all get's down to what you want to do and how versatile you need to be, without having to switch to different operating systems by rebooting.
You can also use your bootcamp partition inside VMware without altering it's configuration.

 

[uiop]

Why don't you just use Bootcamp? Seems easier to me, at least that's what i did...

Not to turn this into a Mac vs PC debate, but I hate Windows, and everything I do is on the mac, so there are very few things I need to do in windows. If I ran bootcamp then I'd not be able to use my mac while I was botting (which I do many hours a day).

 

[npittas]

This is not about PC or Mac. It's about the ability to run multiple OSes or versions of OSes through a main "panel". You can do the same in a Linux Box, or without even a base OS. This is how large scale database deployments are maintained, these days. And this is the future of computing.

 

[secarter2k3]

A lot of our (the company I work for) Terminal Servers are virtual, with up to date snapshots in case of corruption or any other form of degradation. The ability to change the allocated resources, relatively on the fly, is a nice feature. I am attempting setting up a VM Ware Workstation installation with a 60GB drive, 2048MB RAM and a x64 OS (Windows). In theory, HB should work once all updates are finished, am I correct?

 

[jonnycmc]

When I run wow on VMWare with the recommended system config all my wow models are pretty screwy, most of the mobs are big balls of spikes, characters are all disfigured ect...
I have updated Dx and made sure all the settings are correct.