Win 2000 screen resolution (installed Guest additions)

timcs · Post by **timcs** » 26. Sep 2008, 15:41

Hi

After reading here about installing windows 2000 as a guest I am a happy owner of an installed guest running on Vista 32bit host. This I got working after reading about the delay needed when installing 2000.

I then read about installing the guest additions (GA) to get the screen resolution and other drivers working correctly.

Before the GA was installed I could only get 640x480 and 16 colours. Now however I can only get 800x600 up to 64bit colours.

The laptop I am running this off can go up to 1920x1080 , however I really ownly need to go to 1024x768. I read around and tried one posters command line using

Code: Select all

vBoxSDL -vm VirtualMachineName -fixedmode 1024 768 16

but I got a screen I could not see as VB had made the window too small to view.

Further to this post, I have not installed any additional drivers because I understand from other posts here that this is not how virtualbox works. I am correct about this?.

Any help would be appreciated

Post by **Sasquatch** » 26. Sep 2008, 23:14

If you can run a machine with 64 bit colours, you're the first one to get it working. How does it look, with that many colours?

Have you tried increasing the video memory of the Guest?

timcs · Post by **timcs** » 27. Sep 2008, 00:28

Sasquatch wrote:If you can run a machine with 64 bit colours, you're the first one to get it working. How does it look, with that many colours?

Have you tried increasing the video memory of the Guest?

Oops my mistake

Would have been good wouldn't it if I could eh?

.

I think I was trying to remember the max colours and just guessed.

Any thoughts on my post?

Post by **Sasquatch** » 27. Sep 2008, 00:48

What about my question? Did you increase the VRAM?

timcs · Post by **timcs** » 27. Sep 2008, 10:35

Sasquatch wrote:What about my question? Did you increase the VRAM?

Sorry Sasquatch I am getting used to this new laptop and its screen res in Vista. Do not normally have a screen res of 1920x1080 on an 18" LCD screen! Fonts seem very small but I think it would be silly to lower the res if the screen can do FULL HD as well!.

As for your question, yes I have set the screen video ram on the Virtual machine, to the top most setting. Would I have to re-install anything after doing this ?

Post by **Sasquatch** » 27. Sep 2008, 19:17

No, that should not be needed. I assume from your response that you were not able to set a higher resolution in the Guest. Did the GA install properly? What does the Device Manager say for the video adapter?

timcs · Post by **timcs** » 27. Sep 2008, 23:19

Sasquatch wrote:No, that should not be needed. I assume from your response that you were not able to set a higher resolution in the Guest. Did the GA install properly? What does the Device Manager say for the video adapter?

That is correct, I am still unable to set a higher resolution. The GA did install correctly without a problem I had replied YES to install the unsigned digital hardware prompts (I think that is how it is stated).

Device manager reports the graphics adapter as VirtualBox Graphics Adapter. There are no indications of failed hardware installed within the Device manager.

Something I should have possibly mentioned before

I have two screens one is the Laptops LCD and the other is a 19" CRT iiyama. Could this be any reason for this problem?

Post by **Sasquatch** » 27. Sep 2008, 23:32

That should not be a problem. The physical monitor attached should not limit VB to 800x600, unless that is the maximum of the monitor.

timcs · Post by **timcs** » 28. Sep 2008, 13:44

Sasquatch wrote:That should not be a problem. The physical monitor attached should not limit VB to 800x600, unless that is the maximum of the monitor.

Its not that then as the monitor highest res is 1600x1200 . The second monitor is acting as an extended desktop as well.

Does this look and sound like a re-install? If so I have just got to remember where that post was again about applying the delay to the start up of the virtual machine. Wish I had bookmarked it now

Post by **Sasquatch** » 28. Sep 2008, 22:47

Delay the start of your VM? Why would you need that?

A full reinstall could be something you can try, but I would create a new VM for this. Unless there is no additional work on the VM.

timcs · Post by **timcs** » 29. Sep 2008, 00:06

Sasquatch wrote:Delay the start of your VM? Why would you need that?

A full reinstall could be something you can try, but I would create a new VM for this. Unless there is no additional work on the VM.

The delay is to do with installing/running Windows 2000 as it looped during install and the "fix" is mentioned in the manual (found the thread now and bookmarked it).

I have since installed Win 2000 again as a new VM with a new hdd. I am still getting the same problem after installing the GA.

Next step is to uninstall VM re-install it but I feel that this will not solve it.

timcs · Post by **timcs** » 30. Sep 2008, 01:06

I have this working but I ended up installing verion 1.6.6 to make it work. not sure why the latest does not. The 1.6.6 version lets me go up to 1280x??? (can't remember number now.)

timcs · Post by **timcs** » 2. Oct 2008, 14:27

On this same problem, is it possible to try an earlier version of GA on 2.0.2?

My reason for asking is I am having issues with 1.6.6