Windows 10 guest video problem on Mac host Retina display

Discussions related to using VirtualBox on Mac OS X hosts.
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comic
Posts: 2
Joined: 27. Jul 2016, 16:42
Primary OS: Mac OS X other
VBox Version: OSE other
Guest OSses: Windows 10, Windows 7, Ubuntu 14.04

Windows 10 guest video problem on Mac host Retina display

Post by comic »

I found an easy workaround the hard way--trial and error. I'm surprised that this fix wasn't posted (or if it is posted, it wasn't easy for me to find) so I thought I'd help out the next person. I recently got a 13" macbook pro with retina display. I installed virtualbox 5.1.2 r108956 and Windows 10 guest, as well as Guest Additions 5.1.2. The Win10 guest was fine when I had a 1920x1080 external monitor attached. It would go full screen and full 1920x1080 resolution. However, when I'd unplug the external displays, the macbook native resolution would completely hose the Win10 display. It took a while to figure out a good workaround, which was to shutdown Win10; go to Settings > Display > HiDPI Support, then UNCHECK the box for "Use Unscaled HiDPI Output". I also checked/enabled "Enable 3d Acceleration" as well as "Enable 2D Video Acceleration" and all seems happier. I can still go full screen and full 1920x1080 on my external monitor, and when I unplug monitors, my Win10 virtualbox will scale down to 1280x800, which sounds kinda lame, but it scales to a normal look, and it functions properly. Prior to that, the symptoms were that the Win10 guest display would glitch on Retina, and throw up odd grey or black swaths of rectangles and blank out parts of the screen. If you dragged a corner of the Win10 guest window, and resized, it would clean up the screen, until you moused over something, then it would glitch again. Even as I write this, I just tested by unplugging external monitors--one on built-in HDMI, and one on Thunderbold/VGA (where the Win10 1920x1080 was running full screen) and it automatically scaled down to 1280x800 and kept working without a problem. 1280x800 may not be great, but function before fashion! :D Also, it took a while for me to figure out that the main Virtualbox window doesn't have the "Devices" option, to "Insert Guest Additions CD image". For that, you have to go to the window where the VM is actually running on your macbook, then find the "Devices" menu there.
Jan-Alex
Posts: 1
Joined: 20. Sep 2016, 09:08

Re: Windows 10 guest video problem on Mac host Retina display

Post by Jan-Alex »

Got the same problem. Windows 10 guest on Mac OS X host.
Black blocks everywhere, impossible to do anything, buttons and menus would just disappear.

Will there be a fix, so that we can continue to use the HiDPI Setting?
The fonts are much nicer...

Jan
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