virtualbox.org

Hi

I've been struggling to add dual monitors on a windows 2000 professional sp4 guest that i virtualized from a old PC.

I've Guest Additions on the guest.
I'm using v5.0.16.
The button to enable monitor 2 is there, but nothing happens when pressed.

I've tried with a windows xp and linux mint guests and dual monitor works just fine.

Is there anything i'm missing?!? Help me please.

Here is the log.

Sorry for the bad language....

Thanks in advance.

Did Windows 2000 support multiple monitors? I genuinely don't know. Do you?

mpack wrote:Did Windows 2000 support multiple monitors? I genuinely don't know. Do you?

This old PC used 2 monitors and had a graphic card with 2 channels. SO...Yes.

Well, bear in mind that VirtualBox provides the hardware simulation, not the OS. We know the hardware simulation works because you already said so: XP and Mint are happy with it. So, either there is something wrong with the hardware recipe (I'm not sure if chipset is the same or matters for this feature), or there is something wrong with the configuration of the guest OS. Did you try adding new hardware in Control Panel?

Yes, i've tried to add new hardware through the Control Panel, but no new hardware is found.

I don't know what to do next, i'm lost. Maybe it's not possible. (too bad for me)

Thanks alot for your help.

Did you check if the chipsets are the same? I don't know if it matters, the point is to work out what's different (other than the guest OS config).

The log shows plenty of activity inside the guest on "uScreenId=0", I don't see anything at all for "uScreenId=1". I don't think the guest OS is using the second display.

Please confirm that you aren't using fullscreen mode, or if you are, that you have at least two physical displays attached to your host PC?

I found this archived Microsoft support page. It might be worth checking through. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/238886

Is a second monitor vital for the application you are trying to maintain?

Could the application be moved to XP? With a bit of luck all you need do is copy the Program Files folder to the new host. Maybe you have to find a registry branch and export that to the new host as well. I've been doing stuff like this myself over the last couple of weeks - most apps are resilient in this way: if vital config is missing they'll recreate it. VMs cost you nothing, so it should be easy to test.

Hi, I would like to bring this topic back as I have the same problem, and unfortunately the program on the guest needs dual monitors. The guest program has a single window that is stretched across two monitors, if there is only one monitor available is still shows the same window but everything is squeezed together.

From what was discussed above I had tried to use dual monitors with both of the chipsets that virtual box offers. I had tried to remake the system on a Windows xp OS with no luck, the software was not compatible and would not launch; I tried this by directly copying all the files directly and with the original install discs. I also read through the Microsoft help page that was linked and none of the information helped.

From a guest standpoint I started looking through the registry and it looks like VirtualBox has not even tried to make a second monitor. I was looking in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\ and HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG\System\CurrentControlSet\SERVICES. Both of these locations still had keys and values from the original legacy machine showing how the two monitors were configured.

I think the issue is how Windows 2000 uses 2 monitors vs other OSs. It looks like the display is stretched across 2 monitors instead of an extension of the primary monitor, ie, when you press Alt-Ctrl-Del the system windows appears in the middle of the two monitor. I currently am using this information to have a type of work around where I run VirtualBox in windowed mode with a resizeable window and I stretch the virtual box window across the two monitors. This actually works pretty well as the guest program looks perfect; I will be sticking with this solution if we cannot come up with a better one. I'm thinking the easiest solution would be if there is some registry value I can edit on the host to make full screen applications appear stretched across both monitors; or if there is some command prompt setting where I can change how VirtualBox handles full screen.

I will be continuing to troubleshoot this issue and if I do come up with a solution I'll be sure to post it here. Thanks in advance for any help.

*SOLVED*

I used a similar work around to what I was describing in my last post. I first set up the host to recognize the 2 monitors as 1 larger monitor, not extended display. For the Intel Graphics I had on my host this was called collage mode, on Nvidia Graphics I believe this is called Surround and on AMD I believe its called Eyefinity. There's plenty of tutorials around the internet on how to set these features up so I won't explain it here. After I had my monitors set in collage mode I simply launched my VM and put it in full screen mode and everything worked perfectly. While the the guest won't see a second monitor this is a viable workaround to get 2 active monitors working in a Windows 2000 VM. I hope this helps someone else with the same issue.