virtualbox.org

On setvideomodehint. I see what you mean. Hmm. I must be thinking of something else then, since the feature I'm thinking of does nothing except configure some extradata fields in the .vbox file. It doesn't need the VM to be running, never mind have the GAs installed.... Ah, found it: I was thinking of the CustomVideoMode feature (section 9.8.1).

On your comments about "who has a VGA screen these days"... as you must know, in a VM the graphics modes are made available by a software simulation, not dictated by host hardware. It is true that the software seems to not include (by default) display size hints which would be larger than the host display, however these could be added manually. In fact section 9.8.2. looks relevant here.

An obvious proof that resizable displays do not require the GAs is to install any OS that doesn't have GA support, e.g. Win98. You do however need a decent VESA driver, such as the BearWindows one recommended in the Win98 tutorial. Otherwise you are restricted to SVGA.

I do forget that there seems to be people who enjoy running Win95 and Win98. I've even run a guest or two with no GAs such as Haiku. Although I sorely missed the GAs. It seems we both have a point.

loukingjr wrote: that makes zero sense, first of all, resizing a guest screen requires the guest additions in order to work, and second of all, the setvideomodehint command also requires the guest additions to be installed.

I should have mentioned, when I uninstall GA, I do not use the setvideomodehint command to change the resolution, I just use the normal Windows screen resolution settings under display properties.

With GA installed, the video adapter is listed as "VirtualBox Graphics Adapter" and I can only set up to the host size. With NO GA installed, the video adapter is blank and I can set up to 1920x1200. Both modes, I use the normal windows display properties to set resolution (except for when GA is installed, I also tried that setvideomodehint command).