Installing Guest Additions limits Screen Resolution

[Milan Kaneria]

Before installing Guest Additions I have the full list of available screen resolutions from 800x600 to 1280x1024 but after installing Guest Additions the only available screen resolution is 800x600.

Switching to Fullscreen Mode does not resolves the problem.

Host : WinXP SP3 with 1024x768 Guest: WinXP SP3

[Frank Mehnert]

Please refer to the user manual section 9.12.

[Milan Kaneria]

Replying to frank:

Please refer to the user manual section 9.12.

Thank you very much for quick solution. I read the manual but somehow missed that section.

[Masoris]

Same problem here. I have problem both Windows XP and Ubnutu 8.04 guest.

[Frank Mehnert]

masoris, so did you read section 9.12 of the user manual as suggested in my last comment?

[Masoris]

Yes, so I fixed it now. I think Virtualbox has a problem to find out host resolution.

[Masoris]

Many Ubuntu users experience this bug: ​http://www.google.co.kr/search?aq=f&aq=f&num=50&complete=1&hl=en&newwindow=1&client=firefox-a&rls=com.ubuntu%3Aen-GB%3Aunofficial&hs=e7w&q=virtualbox+max+resolution+800x600+site%3Aubuntuforums.org&btnG=Search

[Frank Mehnert]

This is the same problem. We will weaken the test a little bit more in our next release.

[Masoris]

This bug is not fixed yet on 2.0.0 version. I should remove manually resolution limitation by type this in terminal. $ VBoxManage setextradata global GUI/MaxGuestResolution any

[veK]

I have a similar problem. After setting up vbox with win xp I could only go up to 1600x1200 instead of 1920x1200. After installing the guest additions this changed to a max resolution of 1400x1050 - so it was better without the stupid additions. nice... I tried that vboxmanage setextradata global GUI/maxguestresolution stuff but it didn't change anything. so how can I get my 1920 or at least get rid of the addition again so I can at least get back to 1600x1200 - even though that's obv not what I want.

[Sander van Leeuwen]

Make sure you have configured enough VRAM for the guest.

[Frank Mehnert]

And make sure you use the correct case, that is

VBoxManage setextradata global GUI/MaxGuestResolution any

If you mis-write that, that setting will be silently ignored.

[veK]

ok, the "any" command did work. I guess I didn't type the correct case. Still I've got a problem: I can only choose 1920x1440 now but not 1920x1200. It's just not there. When I try to set width and height manually via the cmd line I get right back to where I started without the additions: 1600x1200. I'm kinda confused now why there is no 1920x1200 available.

[Frank Mehnert]

How do you set the geometry by command line? Apart from this, when you open the guest display settings there will be only the resolutions 1280x1024, 1400x1050, 1600x1200, 1920x1440 available because only these are pre-defined in the guest additions. You might try to set the resolution with

VBoxManage controlvm VM_NAME setvideomodehint XRES YRES BPP

[Frank Mehnert]

No response, closing.

[Lukas Valda]

This bug shows again in VB v4.3.12 r93733. I had some virt. mach. with resolution limitation just because of this line <ExtraDataItem name="GUI/MaxGuestResolution" value="1027,768"/> in VirtualBox.xml file.