Can I use dual monitors in an XP Home guest

No. The virtual machine only supports one monitor (although it can be virtually any size). If your system supports a "single desktop" mode (where both monitors appear to be one desktop to Windows) then you can get the same effect via windowshade mode and the single, large desktop.

I could not run the same guest in each instance of VM.

That's right. You could clone the VM, but then it's two VMs.

I'd like to open Explorer and drag it to my second monitor.

Not a chance - that's effectively dragging a program between computers, and it's quite hard to do that.

One solution might be to run a second VM that only runs a desktop-expanding program like MaxiVista and use that to get a second monitor (I use it to extend my desktop onto my laptop at home for that all-important third monitor).

Unfortunately VMware itself doesn't work too well on multiple monitors - what I'd really like is a windowshade mode that covered all of the available desktop, even if that meant having to have a rectangular desktop (viz, 2400x1200 rather than my usual 1200x1000 + 1000x1200 with one in portrait mode)

HTH

Moz

You don't need to run MaxiVista in a second VM if you're using a Windows host.

1. Install the MaxiVista server (primary) component in the guest.

2. Install the MaxiVista viewer (secondary) component on the host.

3. Additionally you need to disable Edit > Preferences > Input > Ungrab when cursor leaves window, and:

4. Uninstall the VMware mouse driver in the guest.

And BTW, this isn't an endorsement for MaxiVista.

Is there any indication from VMWare if dual monitor

support is in their roadmap?  If so, any idea how

long we have to wait.

Improving multi-monitor support is certainly something we'd like to do, but I can't comment when/if it will happen.

Try adding the following in the VM's vmx file:

svga.maxWidth = "2560"

svga.maxHeight = "1024"

Thanks Jameslin that work a treat. I've managed to set up 3 monitors, the primary, hosts secondary and the a laptop.

I have vmware player and a FC5 virtual machine, running Windows XP Pro as my Host OS.  I have dual LCD displays.  I have a custom 2560x900 modeline in my FC5 xorg.conf file, and it boots up just fine -- but with scrollbars!!! 

In "full screen" mode, vmware only covers a single screen, as expected.  My problem is that in non-full-screen mode I can only resize the player to the width of a single screen, so I'm left with scrollbar to go left and right on my guest OS desktop. 

I have the following in my .vmx file:

svga.maxWidth=2560

svga.maxHeight=1024

svga.vramSize=10485760

What am I missing?  Does Vmware Player not support these super-wide modes?  Why can't I resize it so that it's wide enough that I don't have scrollbars?  Everyone says that it's "simple" to get working (this double wide mode), but perhaps that's only in vmware workstation?

Thanks in advance!

Ultramon did not help me.  For one thing, I am using vmware player, not vmware.  hence, there is no "view" menu.  That could be part of my problem.  When I hit the "maximize" hotkey it fills only my primary display.  Note that even if I have my player on my secondary display, it moves it over to primary and maximizes only on that screen.  It's actually less useful in that respect than the maximize button on my vmware player was before.

Perhaps it's because the step where I was supposed to do auto fit stuff in the "view" menu was skipped due to lack of a "view" menu on the player?

I thought that people were in general able to resize their windows to a double-wide desktop size, crossing monitor boundaries, without tools like ultramon installed.  Is this not the case?  If this is the case, is it only with vmware, or is it also possible with vmware player?