Screen count not working, and a fix

[hangerglide]

I don't get it; you wrote this, after telling me to clear the values in xml:

The following assumes that you've installed VirtualBox in its default "C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox", if not, adjust accordingly:

• "C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\VBoxManage" setextradata "GUI/LastGuestSizeHint"
  "C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\VBoxManage" setextradata "GUI/LastGuestSizeHint1"
  "C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\VBoxManage" setextradata "GUI/LastGuestSizeHint2"
  "C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\VBoxManage" setextradata "GUI/LastNormalWindowPosition"
  "C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\VBoxManage" setextradata "GUI/LastNormalWindowPosition1"
  "C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\VBoxManage" setextradata "GUI/LastNormalWindowPosition2"
  "C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\VBoxManage" setextradata "GUI/LastNormalWindowPosition3"

This will reset all the values, well, actually delete them. Try again and if it fails then post the new set of logs. ZIPPED please.

those command would not work; missing parameter error; I googled and arrived and what seemed to be the correct syntax for my environment. I don't need all of those monitors so I only did the two commands I posted.

[socratis]

those command would not work; missing parameter error;

Of course! D'Oh! It was missing the "VM_name" parameter!
Terribly sorry, this was completely my fault, mea culpa

But somehow(?), those values have been removed from the .vbox file, which means we're good to go. All is reset, and it seems that VirtualBox has found and initialized the 2nd monitor:
[quote=""win 10 pro 02 (o2016).vbox""]

<ExtraDataItem name="GUI/LastNormalWindowPosition" value="135,71,1735,1031"/>
<ExtraDataItem name="GUI/LastNormalWindowPosition1" value="640,340,640,480"/>

[/quote][quote=""VBox.log""]

00:00:01.622421   MonitorCount     <integer> = 0x0000000000000002 (2)

[/quote]
Now, you got to show the 2nd monitor. Find it by going to the menu "Window", you should have two entries. Select the 1st, then the 2nd to force the window to show if it doesn't. The entries should look like:

win 10 pro 02 (o2016) [Running] : 1
win 10 pro 02 (o2016) [Running] : 2

Then go in your guest's 1st monitor (the primary), login and make sure that your guest OS sees and recognizes the 2nd monitor. Make the appropriate resolution changes for each monitor from within the guest OS settings.

This time I double-checked the steps/instructions carefully on a VM to make sure I don't screw up again...

[hangerglide]

You're helping a ton and it wasn't that hard to figure out the params via search

I'm not sure what you mean by this: "Find it by going to the menu "Window", you should have two entries." I don't see anything like that in the vbox UI; I don't see it in the xml file. In the guest windows, there are two monitor listed but only one is actually appearing.

Oh you must mean in the vbox window that is hosting the running guest. I don't see a menu "Window" but there is a "View" menu with two virtual screens listed? Nothing I can do to v screen 2 makes it appear.

[socratis]

You're helping a ton and it wasn't that hard to figure out the params via search

Thank you for understanding, and here's another tip for you; you don't have to search on the web, there's a whole chapter dedicated in the User Manual, ch. 8 VBoxManage, and in there you can find ch. 8.30. VBoxManage getextradata/setextradata.

I don't see a menu "Window" but there is a "View" menu with two virtual screens listed?

How does that song go? "Oops I did it again" ?

When I said I tried every step, I actually did. Just not on the same... platform, I'm on OSX mainly. So, I tried to replicate the whole thing on a Win10-64 host (I have a grandpa PC). And you're right, what I told you should look for is under the "View" menu on your host: "Virtual Screen 1", "Virtual Screen 2".

Under "Virtual Screen 1", I see several "Resize to 640x480...1920x1200" and several "Scale to 100%...200%" entries. And under "Virtual Screen 2", there is an entry before anything called "Enable". Is that checked? It should be...


Oh and another slight difference between the OSes; each window title bar on your Windows host should be like the entries below:

win 10 pro 02 (o2016) [Running] - Oracle VM VirtualBox : 1
win 10 pro 02 (o2016) [Running] - Oracle VM VirtualBox : 2

[hangerglide]

I see the title bar now, on the one screen that appears.
The enable entry is disabled; not clickable.

[socratis]

/me scratches head...
Can we try this one last time? Start the VM, login, right-click » Display Settings » Advanced Display Settings, observe that the two monitors are there, try to switch the resolution on monitor2, shutdown the VM. Grab the VBox.log (only, don't need the rest) along with the .vbox recipe, ZIP them and attach them.

The enable entry is disabled; not clickable.

Disabled and greyed out I take it. The rest of the options (Resize, Zoom) are also disabled? For both virtual screens?

[hangerglide]

OK, thanks for all of this guidance. I think we have it - for some reason, I've never seen this before, inside windows 10, the Multiple Displays setting is "Show only only 1", and when I try to change it to "extend these displays" the setting won't stick. This is a windows issue, clearly. If I find a fix for it I'll post that here just for completeness.

But overall there was something wrong with vbox; my old fix where I'd bump it to 3 so that it'd show 2 operative screens is more of a sign of that, at least I'd think.

Appreciate it Socratis!

[socratis]

So, you're thinking something wrong with the guest internally? Not entirely impossible actually, we've covered everything from the side of VirtualBox...

There's an easy way to test this; download a new Win10 ISO from Microsoft (just to be safe), create a minimal installation (I'd disconnect all the network cables if I were you) and simply test the 2 monitor setup. Just to get it to show and to put your mind at ease...

[hangerglide]

Socratis, thank you again for all of your persistence and patience. For an end user like myself of a complex product list virtualbox, there are riches and confusions behind every menu item.

Our earlier dialog was months ago; I made do with the single screen since then, never found a fix with windows or virtualbox. Today I took another look and found that under the menu View, Virtual Screen 2, "Enable" was NOT checked. Checking it made the second screen show up, after all of this time. I see that you asked about "Enable" back in March, I think I lost track of that during the confusion about menus. But mostly I can't image how I could have not seen the Enable entry there.

It doesn't really matter at this point, I'm not going to forget about the Enable setting after this, but I would never have unchecked it. When one adds a monitor, it starts out Enabled, right? I wonder how it got to be disabled. I've never ever adjusted any setting in the View menu; I've always resized by dragging the vbox windows to the size that I prefer on each window.