Setting Resolution On VMWare Guest Running On Windows XP Host
February 19, 2008I have been using vmware to host specialized development and testing environments for various clients. With a reasonably powerful machine there isn’t a perceptible difference between a vm and a native install for your workstation plus it offers an impressive amount of flexibility for things. Backups are a snap, moving development environments around can be exciting as well. Thus far it has been a huge win.
I just installed a windows xp vm on my laptop and while my Debian install automagically setup the correct resolution, I wasn’t able to set the xp vm to a widescreen resolution within the vm. So I dug around and found that simply opening the file <yourvmname>.vmx and adding the following lines :
svga.maxWidth = “1680″
svga.maxHeight = “1050″
Save the file. Then reboot the vm. Go into the display settings in the vm and set it to the desired resolution, that’s all there is to it.
The one thing that I don’t know for sure is whether you need to have the VMTools installed for this to work. However I think the VMTools make the vm a little more useful on the desktop so it’s probably worth installing them.
vmtools provide accelerated drivers for video/mouse/network and improve your performance.
st | February 20, 2008vmtools provide accelerated drivers for video/mouse/network and improve your performance.
Oh ok. I noticed that I no longer have to
joelhainley | February 20, 2008Oh ok. I noticed that I no longer have to press ctrl-alt to get out of the vm when it has focus after I installed vmtools.
The reason I brought up the vmtools thing in relation to the resolution settings, was because I swear I saw something about svga in the install status messages when vmtools was installing.
..and vmtools allows you to resize the VM on the
Egyptian Prescription | February 20, 2008..and vmtools allows you to resize the VM on the fly, it will automagically adjust the desktop size.
(I am using Fusion on the Mac - very impressive)
Is there a way to have your vmclient run in
Thomas Hughes | February 28, 2008Is there a way to have your vmclient run in a window on your desktop, so that you can see both of them at the same time (instead of ctrl-alt to swap between the two of them)? I see here how to set a specific resolution for the vmware client, but I want to run it in (say) 1024×768, and still see the rest of my desktop behind its window. When I use these settings vmware is still fullscreen but w/the 1024×768 resolution.
If I understand your question correctly. You can just click
joelhainley | March 5, 2008If I understand your question correctly. You can just click the button on the vm ware management tool so that it’s not a maximized window. I suppose the other thing you could do is run the vm and then connect to it via remote desktop.