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As of recently (I think it happened with a recent Jaunty update) my guest Win7 (32 bit) only runs as 800x600 on my Ubuntu 9.04 64 bit host while my WinXP guest on the same computer is just fine. I'm using 3.0.4 VB. I depend on Win7 because of some legacy applications and voice dictation.

- there are no options in Win7 other than the generic 800x600
- guest additions won't change the behavior
- window resizing doesn't
- messing with my xorg.conf (as described here: http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-926408.html) only made my computer get stuck before getting to the login, display was only showing stribes and was non-responsive to keyboard commands

Any help would be much appreciated!

If you are having this problem with Win 7 then the host is not the problem. The guest additions are not installed in Win 7.

Start the Win7 guest and the click the device tab and then unmount the CD. Then click the device tab and click install guest additions. Reboot when the additions have been installed.
Look at the guest and click the machine tab to see if the autoresize is blue. Click it a few time to see that it changes and then leave it with the blue indicator. Then you can use the mouse click and drag or you can use (host + F) to go full screen. That key is a toggle by the way to get back to normal mode.

Perryg,

Thanks for your help. I already had GuestAdditions installed but reinstalled after unmounting the CD as you recommended. No difference... I attached a screen shot of both my screwed up Win7 with Adobe and Win Office installed (the one I want to rescue) and a new installation. I did have a problem with the odd looking Win7 when my Firefox caused complete freezes repeatedly and caused the installation to be only bootable in "safe mode" and checkdisk would not work upon rebooting. I then created a new Win7, attached the broken Win7 as a primary slave drive, ran checkdisk and it was fixed when mounted back to the correct virtualbox. The graphics were fine until recently (I don't recall any particular event that could have caused that).
Even stranger, when I now boot in safe mode, the graphics are just fine and can easily be resized although GuestAdditions are not showing in the toolbar.

Maybe this really is a Windows 7 problem and not a Virtualbox issue? But on the other hand the drive for the display is a virtualbox driver.

Thanks again!

I fired up my Win 7 guest and after updating everything and installing the guest additions including the 3D in safe mode I simply can not replicate your problem.
Maybe if you remove the guest additions and then reboot, make sure that everything works, the install them again they will take.
Another funny thing that I can not explain is it appears that Aero is working for me, and AFAIK it is not supposed to.
I have the entire Aero theme including the sidebar with gadgets....Strange.

You did it! Uninstalling mysteriously fixed the screen resolution and color depth problem. It also automatically resizes again. Thank you!
Still... a mystery...

Perryg wrote:I fired up my Win 7 guest and after updating everything and installing the guest additions including the 3D in safe mode I simply can not replicate your problem.
Maybe if you remove the guest additions and then reboot, make sure that everything works, the install them again they will take.
Another funny thing that I can not explain is it appears that Aero is working for me, and AFAIK it is not supposed to.
I have the entire Aero theme including the sidebar with gadgets....Strange.

Aero works, because Aero is just the new look of the interface (versus the Windows XP theme.) What you're not seeing is Aero Glass, which is the composite engine which allows the transparent window decorations and desktop effects. So, it's Glass that's the important one.

I hope Virtualbox supports it at some point; the latest VMware Workstation does support Aero Glass now, and it works pretty well. Of course, I don't know if it works under Linux, it might only work when running Windows guests under Windows hosts.