Dual monitor set-up not working anymore since upgrading to VBox 6.0.10 (#18872)

[socratis]

Confirmed on an OSX 10.11.6 host with a Mint19-64 Cinnamon guest.

Moving to "Linux Guests" from "Windows Hosts", as this is not exclusively a Windows-host issue...

[gnome.gemini]

I have the exactly same problem. One workaround is to use another gpu but you can also install the 6.0.8 guest additions which solves the multi screen problem.

[schoenborno]

I have the exact same problem but an odd twist which might be useful for devs to debug: I have two VMs and one works with VMSVGA and the other does not! Details:

• both VMs are identical as far I can tell from the settings (same HW like memory etc, same OS, same guest additions) EXCEPT that I had to set one VM to use VSVGA
• both VMs run Ubuntu 18.04.3
• host is Windows 10 Pro
• VirtualBox 6.0.12, guest additions version 6.0.12
• the VM that I had to set to VSVGA has following behavior when I try to run it with VMSVGA:
  
  • after powering up, the 2 displays appear but display 1 (the main desktop) is not full screen, display 2 is full screen and shows second ie extended desktop;
  • if I resize display 1 (not even to full screen, just anything), it disappears and display 2 shows the main desktop
  • the very first time I started this vm, display 1 was full screen so I was unable to get display 2 to show up at all, the Enable button would stay available etc as described in other posts, then I think I changed its size and restarted and this time display 2 showed up as described in previous item
  • if I make the display 1 full screen and power down, and start again, I cannot make the second display appear, regardless of what I do with the View menu

If there is any comparison of log files or such that would be useful to you, let me know, since one VM works!

[tsela]

Any progress on this issue? I just upgraded to 6.0.12 and the VMSVGA graphics controller still does not function correctly with two screens. The issues are identical to what I reported earlier so I don't need to repeat myself. Still using the legacy controller for the time being but it would be nice to have an ETA on when this will be solved, especially given the warnings that the legacy controller will be removed from version 6.1 of VirtualBox.

[socratis]

but it would be nice to have an ETA on when this will be solved

There's never an ETA, so don't expect one... Keep on trying the latest test builds or the new 6.1.0b1, those are your best options...

[benmaxrei]

Still don't work with 6.1.0 beta_1.

When i activate the second monitor, the first one scales to minimun resolution.

[SteveC1]

Running an Ubuntu guest on an Ubuntu host. It appears I am running virtualbox 6.0.14.

Having installed the guest utilities, I was able, finally to get two displays to appear for my guest box. (Side note: this took multiple tries and I forget the trick I used to get it to work. For about an hour or two, I couldn't check "enabled" for the second window under view and have it actually "take"--as I said I can't remember what I did to fix this.)

The problem is, even though virtual screen 1 can be resized with the "adjust window size" option, if I try to do so with virtual screen 2, it immediately closes, virtual screen 1 resets to some very small size, and I am not able to "enable" virtual screen 2. I have to restart the VM to get things back.

[socratis]

We need to see a complete VBox.log, from a complete VM run, where the problem occurs:

• Start the VM from cold-boot (not from a paused or saved state) / Observe or recreate the problem / Shutdown the VM (force close it if you have to).
• With the VM completely shut down (not paused or saved), right-click on the VM in the VirtualBox Manager and select "Show Log".
• Save only the first "VBox.log", ZIP it and attach it to your response. See the "Upload attachment" tab below the reply form.

[SteveC1]

OK, was able to do the log. (Ironically I got it here [this is the virtual machine I'm using right now] via the share I complained about in the other issue.)

I started the VM, logged in. I could not drag the second display window nor expand it; it was frozen in place. But when I went to the view menu -> virtual screen 2 and tried to select a different size for it, the second screen instantly disappeared and the first one took on the size I had just selected for the second one.

The first display is hand-resized (using the adjust window size option) until it just fills my left hand monitor below the host system task bar; it's a bit less than 1920x1200, therefore.

Intended use case:

I wanted to resize the second display to fill its monitor too; instead I've had to settle for setting it to the precanned size 1680x1050, the largest window that will fit on one of my monitors without pushing the borders of the VM Machine window off the edges of the monitor.

Thank you in advance for your time.

[SteveC1]

And now something has happened and the second monitor is GONE.

When I attempt to re-enable it by selecting View->Virtual Screen 2->Enable, all that happens is my first monitor reverts to 1680x1050, and trying to do so again does absolutely nothing.

[AxelMueller]

As stated in earlier post dual-monitor works well in 6.0.8 - I'm using this for version for months.
After I updated to to 6.0.14 it worked until I updated VBoxLinuxAdditions to 6.0.14.
When the guest OS switches to graphics mode two windows (for the two monitors) are opened but one immediately closes afterwards.
After downgrading VBoxLinuxAdditions to 6.0.8 dual-monitor worked again.

[socratis]

@SteveC1
Merged your thread with the prominent thread on this issue, and moving the whole thing to the "Using VirtualBox" area.

[SteveC1]

Well, in the hopes that this information is useful, I'll add a couple of observations I just made:

I had stretched the window for display one to cover the entire screen, minus the host task bar. (So, scanning down from the top, you'd see the host task bar, the title bar for VirtualBox : 1, then the task bar for the guest...and the window frame would appear on both sides and the tool bar (or whatever it is called) for the virtual box on the bottom. It was NOT full screen mode, but sized as big as possible.

When I resumed from "saved" this morning the side borders were not present, nor were they "bled over" onto the second (physical) monitor.

During the period of time I had it (sort of) working I had noticed a tendency for the guest task bar on virtual screen one to "bleed over" slightly onto virtual screen 2. I could fix it by going into the virtual machine's display settings and dragging the right hand monitor to the right.

Just before I lost my second screen, I had noticed that the window for it on the host had somehow migradted until it was almost completely under the window for display 1; only the rightr edge was visible. It disappeared when I tried to drag it back out from under the other window and for a fleeting instant, had touched the top of physical display 2 and tried to pop into "full screen" mode as a result. (This is a feature of both linux and windows that I hate, frankly--if I want full screen, there's a perfectly good control on the title bar to do so; I don't want it "helping" me in this way when all I'm trying to do is use desktop real estate efficiently. Sometimes I'm trying to manually tile windows of different sizes, for instance.)

With that in mind I deliberately set my display one to be one of the "precanned" sizes (1680x1050 is the largest where the window and its decorations/borders still fit within a 1920x1200 monitor), closed the virtual machine (saving its state) and reopened it--I still couldn't open the second monitor. I'm about to try a complete shutdown of the VM to see what happens.

I infer from this that there seems to be something about windows on the host going full screen that causes issues.

[SteveC1]

Now this is just plain weird. The machine restarted with two monitors!

However, monitor one showed up on the right physical monitor, and monitor two showed up on the left.

Moving the mouse to the right on display 1 did not result in it going into the other display (I'm not sure if it should), but it does appear that the mouse is miscalibrated somehow; the system believes it's about an inch to the right of where I see it. I also have multiple desktops running and I end up on desktop2 without meaning to.,

Also opening up a terminal and trying to push it to the right onto the second screen (which is on the left) results in it simply going off screen until my mouse pointer vanishes about an inch from the rightr hand edge (because the system thinks the mouse is leaving the window).

OK, I know what you want now. I'm going to shut down again after I post this and grab that log.

[SteveC1]

Here's the log.

I still have two monitors visible but BOTH of them seem to have a miscalibrated mouse issue. The mouse, it turns out, seems to be increasingly inaccurate the further to the right I go within the virtual display (it's usable only with the greatest difficulty). Virtual display 1, which opens on the right hand display, is a non-standard size (it's the vertical height I wanted originally, but not the width, nor is it of a standard width as near as I can tell. Virtual display 2 appears to be of one of the standard sizes.

I went into the host window settings and disabled the "feature" that makes windows snap to full screen when they touch the top border of the screen, so at least that landmine (which deprives me of my second virtual display) is gone. However, if I try to change the size of display 1 to a standard size, I lose display 2 again.

Going into the display settings for the virtual machine, the two (virtual) monitors are shown as having a gap between them. Changing that does not fix the mouse issue.

Too long, didn't read: It's showing me two displays again but it's really dorked up.