virtualbox.org

Hi all,

I'm running VirtualBox 4.3.30 on a Windows 8.1 host. As guestsystem I have Windows 8.1. and Sever 2012 installed. In both guests it is no longer possible to have an automatic resizing of the guest resolution. The max resolution is 1280 x 1024. Windows doesn't let me choose any higher resolution.

The guest additions are installed!

With version 4.3.20 everything worked fine. After upgrading from version 4.3.20 to 4.3.28 the problem started. With 4.3.30 the problem still exist

I tried everything I found in the forums (enable/disable 3d and 2d support, added cuatom video mode, ...) but no success. AS a workaround I start the guest and then connect via RDP.

Any ideas?

willi

You say that you can't resize. Do you actually mean that you can resize, but you can't go larger than 1280x1024?

If yes, then I had that problem with VirtualBox 4.3.12, so really this is not a VBox version issue.

Though you have not said so, I'm going to guess that your host PC has a widescreen monitor. It would be nice to know its display size. I'm guessing that 1024 is close to the full height of your display.

The problem is that your Windows guests think that the virtual monitor is 4:3, so they are helpfully disallowing any display modes that use a widescreen ratio. This constraint is now stored in the windows registry somewhere, so you need to go through a few hoops to get around it.

1. First, make sure you are not in fullscreen mode: i.e. switch to your windowed 1280x1024 mode (or whatever windowed mode suits you).
2. IMPORTANT. Make sure that View|Auto resize guest display is enabled (checked).
3. Make sure that the Guest Additions are installed, not merely having the GAs CD mounted. If they are installed then there should be an icon on the guest taskbar which will tell you the GAs version and status.
4. Carefully drag the bottom edge of the VM window to reduce the screen height. You are trying to achieve a 16:9 ratio, so with a 1280 display width you want a display height of 720, exactly.
5. Shut down the VM completely (not suspend), then restart it. We want windows to start up, seeing a 16:9 ratio while booting up. This should make it happy to accept other 16:9 ratios.

As a test, it should now be possible to go fullscreen, or to use seamless mode without artifacts. But, be careful about resizing the VM again using the guests display properties. IME Windows may still be confused about display sizes - I think it keeps a list somewhere of display sizes known to work with the current monitor, so now it will have a mix of 4:3 and 16:9 ratios, and you want to avoid the former. You may have to manually create new display size hints, but it should at least now be allowing you to choose larger widescreen ratios.

p.s. I don't know where you saw advice to fiddle with 2D/3D support. That's a virtual graphics card feature, nothing to do with your virtual monitor at all!

I can resize the window but the screen resolution keeps stucks at a max of 1280x1024. The resolution of the host is 1600x900 or 1920x1200 (=external monitor).I'll try your suggestions and give feedback

Make sure that the Guest Additions are installed, not merely having the GAs CD mounted. If they are installed then there should be an icon on the guest taskbar which will tell you the GAs version and status.

I see a couple of icons (harddrive, network card, ...) but no special icon which shows the GAs versions. Where exactly ist that icon? According to the Windows installed programs the GAs are installed.

willib2013 wrote:I see a couple of icons (harddrive, network card, ...) but no special icon which shows the GAs versions.

See the image below. Hover the mouse cursor over that icon. Check your notification area settings, perhaps the icon was has been hidden away in your Windows image.

Had the same problem after upgrading to VB 5, and it turned out to be a setting I was not aware of.
Not sure if this is new to VB5 - see attachment.

In fact that option has been around for a while. Indeed I mention it in step 2 above.

@mpack: I tried your steps but that didn't help. After restarting the VM and going to fullscreen the resolution is set to 1152x864.

I found a solution which worked for me here: http://askubuntu.com/questions/211163/v ... 1080-inste

Go To the 'File' menu, and activate 'Environment setting (P)'. Select 'Display', and change the setting for 'Maximum guest screen size' to 'hint', which allows you to set an arbitrary size for both width and height (eg., 1920 and 1200).

Reboot the virtual machine and enjoy it.

I just set the 'Maximum guest screen size' to 'none'. Now the automatic resizing (Host+G) works like before

Thanks for your input

Confirmed ... The same settings work for me on a OSX with a Windows (8.1.N) guest. (See attached).

Thanks to all contributors!

How I just fixed it is Ctrl C to swicth viewing modes from scaled if required then in virtual box settings monitor options i selected VBOXsvga enable 3D acceleration give it 72 mb graphics memory and 3 gb system memory (ram) and in the virtual machine settings under monitor make sure max guest size is none scale factor all monitors 100%, then save! restart virtual machine a couple times to veryfie it is all good! dont worry about any warnings or errors about crashes in linux that is normal when things are changed unnexpectidly and forcing it to shutdown without saving state and re opening will fix this issue!

https://imgur.com/a/nwXpbIk

jamied_uk,
Not sure why you felt the need to wake up a thread that was dealing with an issue that doesn't apply in the 6.x series. Your solution is for the 6.x series, not for the original problem.

Better let the dead sleep, locking this.