Is it possible to run a Windows 10 VM on Mac Mountain Lion

[rdeh71]

Hi,

I have a 2012 Mac Book pro dual I7 16 Gig machine. I have been running Windows 7 in a Fusion VM since I got it quite happily with acceptable performance. I now need to move up to a Windows 10 VM.

As you may know this is looking problematic for the following reasons:

• The latest version of Fusion (11.5) which can probably  run Win 10 will not run on Mountain Lion Mac OS.
• I have downloaded a preinstalled Win10 VM that wont run on my current Fusion version 7.1.
• I installed Mojave on the laptop but the performance was so dire, I could hardly run a browser let alone anything else....

So my question ... Is there a halfway house where I can upgrade to a mac OS that still will run with reasonable performance , and support a newer version of Fusion that will allow a Win 10 VM to run with acceptable performance. There is nothing wrong with the laptop, it is a high spec machine and don't not feel i should have to ditch it yet....

Any helpful replies will be gratefully received ..

Richard

[ColoradoMarmot · Accepted solution]

Upgrading to High Sierra and Fusion 10 should get the job done - assuming they are supported on hardware that old.

FWIW, mountain lion isn't secure and shouldn't be used on an internet-facing machine.  Lots of known vulnerabilities, and it's at high risk of compromise.  While Apple doesn't officially publish OS support timelines, the general rule is N-1 or N-2 for critical security fixes.  That means that this time next year, High Sierra will drop out of support, so you'd have time to plan to get a new machine.

[rdeh71]

I think you are correct about the hardware . Mojave wouldn't run on the laptop, it was like a dog , could hardly get the browser working . When I restored Mountain Lion from a Time machine backup it was peachy... So I can Implement High S , but will need to check if it will run on the H/W first...

I understand the push to always improve and sell more s/w and h/w , actually shouldn't we be starting to move back to  getting things to continue to work, instead of throwing perfectly good h/w and s/w away..

I'll let you know how I get on..

many thanks

Richard

[dempson]

A 2012 MacBook Pro is officially supported up to macOS Catalina (10.15) so far. We'll find out next year if macOS 10.16 will raise the minimum requirements again.

Does your MacBook Pro have a hard drive? If so, that is the most likely reason it performs badly in Mojave. High Sierra is also bad with a hard drive.

Replacing the hard drive with an SSD will make a massive difference, and make Mojave (or High Sierra) usable.

The last few macOS versions have increasingly been "optimised" for solid state drives, and they are doing more disk I/O in the background, which results in a lot of random disk accesses. With a hard drive, this leads to lots of seek delays, and user interface stalls due to waiting for the application's disk I/O to finish. This is especially bad for a few hours after the OS is installed, because Spotlight is busy reindexing the entire drive.

Some of the models I have recently encountered while helping other people (comments relate to general use, none of these have been used for virtual machines as far as I recall):

• Mid 2010 MacBook Pro (core 2 duo) with hard drive: was fine in Snow Leopard, sluggish in Sierra, unbearably slow in High Sierra (can't run Mojave on this model). About to get an SSD installed.
• Early 2011 MacBook Pro (dual core i5) with SSD: fine in High Sierra (can't run Mojave on this model). The SSD was installed because it was annoyingly slow with a hard drive, on Sierra at the time. Snow Leopard was fine on the original hard drive.
• Mid 2012 MacBook Pro (dual core i5) with SSD: fine in Sierra, about to upgrade to Mojave and expect it to be fine.
• Late 2012 Mac Mini (quad core i7) with Fusion drive: fine in Mountain Lion, Sierra and High Sierra, haven't tried Mojave.
• Late 2014 Mac Mini (mid spec dual core i5) with Fusion drive: fine in High Sierra, haven't tried Mojave.
• Late 2014 Mac Mini (low spec dual core i5) with SSD: fine in Mojave and Catalina.
• Late 2015 21.5-inch iMac (dual core i5) with hard drive: unbearably slow in Mojave. Owner is investigating options.
• 2017 21.5-inch iMac (dual core i5) with hard drive: unbearably slow in Mojave. Much better booting from an external SSD.

Hard drives are the common factor for bad performance in High Sierra and Mojave.

[rdeh71]

Hi Dempson,

That's a really good reply. I tried Mojave and it was unusable for the reasons that you have stated. So it looks like High Sierra will be similar. I have just been on the phone to Apple support in Ireland, really helpful, and it looks like putting a 1T SSDD in is probably the best option, before binning it the machine. That should help though obviously wont be as fast as the new machines....

I still feel there is use case for being able to use these these machines in some way , even if s/w and h/w development has advanced... Some form of recycling use, would be a good thing,anyway I digress.

Thanks again

Richard

[ColoradoMarmot]

It's been so long that I didn't even connect dot's on changing to an SSD.  That should make a *massive* difference in performance.  Most drives fail after 4-5 years, so replacing it is probably a good idea in any case.

www.owcomputing.com makes replacements and has instructions for a do-it-yourself upgrade.  I've used them in the past with great luck.

[rdeh71]

... So after much trepidation I did replace the HDD with a SSD , there are some very good Youtube videos around. (Also cleaned the fans). The only hickup was I didnt have the right screwdriver to undo the spacers that hold the HDD in place. Had to go to a local PC store (PC World) and beg use of their screwdrivers (slightly embarrassed), they were really helpful.

Any way it worked and I now have back a super fast system. There was also a tortuous route to get High Sierra loaded. I could'nt get High Sierra USB installation to be recognised by the start up manager. I booted Mountain Lion from the internet, but then it didn't restore from my backup it errored. I had an old Time machine backup of my failed Mojave that did install, which then would not let me Install High Sierra on it. I reinstalled Mountain Lion that did work, and from there High Sierra and Fusion 10.

The only slight remaining wrinkle was in my old VM of Win 7 I had a model plane flight sim. The Supplier has gone bust and now with the new version of Fusion, the usb dongle is no longer recognised. Its a know issue with old USB 2. Anyway mustn't grumble as I now have back a great laptop.

Thanks for everyone's help...

Richard

[ColoradoMarmot]

So for the dongle, there may be a workaround - get a USB 2.0 hub (not 3.0) and put that between the computer and the dongle.