Problems resizing Windows guest display on Debian 12

[Mark7]

Hello,

I have a common problem without the common cause. The Windows guest display on Debian 12 cannot be resized, i.e. the menu entries View->Virtual Screen 1->Resize ... are all greyed out. The guest is Windows 11 22H02; a VM which I imported from a another Linux machine where resizing worked correctly. It has the latest guest additions installed. I tried the following without success:
- Reinstalled guest additions
- Switched between the latest versions of Virtualbox 6.x and 7.x, each with its latest guest additions
- Set the Video memory to 64MB and back to 128MB
- Tried 3D accel on and off
- Set the Video emulation to VMVGA and back to VBoxSVGA.
- Reset VM to snapshot
The host runs Debian 12. As said, this VM resized correctly on Debian 11; both running Gnome and Wayland.

Any ideas what else to try?

Thanks

[scottgus1]

Please start the VM from full normal shutdown, not save-state. Run until you see the problem happen, then shut down the VM from within the VM's OS if possible. If not possible, close the Virtualbox window for the VM with the Power Off option set.

Right-click the VM in the main Virtualbox window's VM list, choose Show in Explorer/Finder/File Manager. In the "Logs" subfolder, zip the VM's "vbox.log", and post the zip file, using the forum's Attachments tab. (Configure your host OS to show all extensions so you can find the "vbox.log", not "vbox.log.1", etc.)

[Mark7]

There are some messages in the log related to resolution:
00:00:04.157478 GUI: UIFrameBufferPrivate::IsVideoModeSupported: Mode: BPP=32, Size=1600x1200 is NOT supported
00:00:04.157510 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxWddmVModesAdd: WARNING! :resolution 1600x1200 not accepted by the frontend
00:00:04.157517 GUI: UIFrameBufferPrivate::IsVideoModeSupported: Mode: BPP=32, Size=1920x1440 is NOT supported
00:00:04.157546 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxMP::vboxWddmVModesAdd: WARNING! :resolution 1920x1440 not accepted by the frontend

Could this be caused by the host's graphics card/drivers? It is an AMD RX6600 using the kernel 6.5 amdgpu driver.

The log file is attached.

[scottgus1]

Those error messages are common, if I read them correctly, and only show situations that can't be achieved at certain points in the boot process. Note that the timestamps are only some 4 seconds after the VM started.

The VM only runs for 25 seconds. Though the 7.0.14 Guest Additions are showing installed, the messages indicating all Guest Additions services have started did not appear in the log.

It could be that the VM didn't run long enough. Or the Guest Additions didn't install correctly. It could also be that the VM OS didn't log into the desktop, which may also be necessary.

Please try again, this time leaving the VM running for 10 minutes, and please report how long it takes for the OS to log into the desktop. Then zip and post the new log.

[Mark7]

I started and stopped the VM only for the purpose of producing the log. Earlier I have had the VM running for more than 30 minutes. The resizing also does not work when waiting longer. I did log into the guest OS every time, also when taking the log. Also, as I wrote earlier, I had uninstalled and re-installed the guest additions several times. It does not help. But I will try again.

[Mark7]

Problem solved. The autostart of VBox Tray was disabled in the Windows Task manager. This setting seems to survive a re-installation of the guest additions. After enabling it, everything works as expected.