virtualbox.org

I have slightly poor eyesight and have up till now been using my monitor (Host; openSuse 11.1) ) at a less than optimum resolution. I have got a new monitor and decided that I should be running it at it's best.... 1680 x 1050 @60Hz
All is fine and I adjusted my global fonts, icons etc so that they were comfortable to view.
However when I launch vBox with a Win XP Pro sp3 guest, everything is microscopically and unusably tiny. I try to REDUCE the resolution to 1024 x res, then re-size, but everything on screen stays tiny, and the vBOX resets the guest res. to the max available. Is it NOT possible to run a vBOXguest at a LOWER resolution than its host?
If I un-install or disable the Guest additions will I be able to?
Can anyone suggest a work round?
I have tried large fonts and dpi adjust in the WindowsXP guest and it helps a bit, but when I launch an app in the guest, the app's text is too small, and it (the app) sits in a tiny window on the screen.



(That is the biggest I can get the app)

When I was using 1024x on my host machine, I could use 1024 in the guest

The resolution on the Guest can vary, but it will always use the pixel size of the Host. Your Host monitor has a native resolution of 1680 x 1050. If you would use half of that resolution, the pixels will become four times as big (instead of one pixel on the monitor, you get 4, it's a square resolution after all) because all the pixels are still used for the monitor. You already know this, because you used it like this before you got the current monitor.
However, Virtualbox still displays the pixels, no matter how much you set, at exactly one pixel size compared to the Host. So a Guest resolution of 1024 x 768 won't use bigger pixels than 1680 x 1050. You have to change the same settings on the Guest as you did for the Host (DPI, font size, etc.).

TY for the reply Sasquatch, I am currently using "wokaround" by increasing dpi to 150 in guest.... sort of nearly makes it work for me, (!)

Well, since you use Linux as Host, you can use the Magnifier that is available in Compiz to temporarily increase the display size. Moving the mouse will move the whole screen though, so keep that in mind (should be an option I think). Sort of like the Magnifier in Windows.