virtualbox.org

I've been running OSE on Ubuntu 10.04 for years with no problems (except my recent drive crash). So now I'm on Ubuntu 14.04 and VirtualBox 5.02. Trying to get it back to the full screen I used to have has been difficult. The best answer and some success came from this link...

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=35086 <-- edited... Wrong link. I meant this one --> viewtopic.php?f=2&t=68966

But it still launches as if it's a smaller screen and creates multiple problems.

1) It leaves the Ubuntu task bar at the top of the screen overwriting the windows guest screen
2) It leaves a horizontal white bar about 2 inches above the bottom of my physical screen on the desktop (I think this is from the mini tool bar it tries to draw in the wrong place and later in the boot corrects, still leaving the artifact onscreen)
3) Because it initially thinks the screen is smaller it moves all icons to fit that smaller screen before resizing to my normal 3840 x 1200

1 & 2 can be corrected by manually switching out of full screen and then back to full screen. But of course I shouldn't have to do that.

It's quite frustrating when the software I ran 5 years ago did a better job. I must be doing something wrong, please help. Oh, I'm running ver 5 of Guest Additions and I've added a display "Hint" as 3840 x 1200.

The software you ran 5 years ago probably didn't have to contend with the existence of widescreen monitors. Remember that VirtualBox isn't just using an arbitrary window size, it is simulating a monitor with specific capabililities and aspect ratio. The windows guest OS as well is trying to be smart and not let you choose display settings that are not sensible, e.g. widescreen sizes when it thinks you have a 4:3 display.

See if the following previous discussion helps: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=68966.

I think you misunderstood my 5 year comparison. Yes I ran it 5 years ago, but I also ran it 5 days ago. I only upgraded due to the hard drive crash. So my point was the 5 year old software was running absolutely perfectly on my wide screen monitors last week. No hardware was changed. So the current problem is either the inability of the software... or more likely, my inability to configure it properly.

And I made a mistake on my referenced forum post... the one you posted is the one that got me this far. So... yes I've already tried that.

Well, if you already (carefully) followed the suggestions in the other thread then you've already read my suggestions.

So the old VirtualBox was better. Damn... I was hoping that wasn't the answer.