Unable to select actual resolution of display w/VMware SVGA 3D driver

[wwinfrey]

Hardware/Software Details

Host OS: Mojave (10.14.5)
Guest OS: Windows 10 v.1809 (OS Build 17763.557)
VMware Fusion v.11.1.0 (13668859)

• Display Options:
  • Accelerate 3D graphics: checked
  • Shared graphics memory: 1024MB
  • Use full resolution for Retina display: checked
    • Scaled high resolution: All View Modes
    • Automatically adjust user interface size in the virtual machine
  • Virtual Machine Resolution: Use Fusion Display Preferences
  • Full Screen: Use Fusion Display Preferences

Hardware: 2017 Macbook Pro 13-inch connected to Samsung C34H89x 3440x1440 display

Problem Description

When my desktop auto-resizes after the installation of the SVGA 3D driver, it resizes to a display resolution of 6880x2880 and scales to 200%. As my display does not support this resolution, Windows 10 takes on a grainy, blurry character. If I go to Windows 10 Display Settings, 3440x1440 is not an available choice.

After the first install of VMware Tools I was able to set the resolution correctly, but after rebooting the VM, the 6880x2880 resolution appeared and I have not been able to get the correct resolution of 3440x1440 to re-appear as an option. This problem has persisted through multiple host & guest machine power cycles, and multiple VMware Tools un- & re-installs.

If I don't install the SVGA 3D driver, my resolution is limited to 1152x864. What options are available to me to correct this situation? Do I have an incorrect setting in Fusion? Has anyone seen an issue like this before?

[wwinfrey · Accepted solution]

After doing some additional searching, I ran across this article: Video Resolution annoyances in your VM’s which suggested consultation of this VMware resource: Increasing virtual machine display resolution to a custom resolution beyond the maximum resolution l... which documented the use of VMwareResolutionSet.exe. Note that VMwareResolutionSet.exe does not have built-in command help via the /? or help flags, so that linked VMware Knowledge Base article is your ally. This article references another VMware KB article, Adding Video Resolution Modes to Windows guest operating systems but I was able to solve my issue without doing either of the steps -modifying the vmx file or adding a Windows registry entry- outlined in that article. In fact, I was unable to find any keys in the registry for my Windows 10 VM that contained the string vmx_svga.

In fact, the only thing that was necessary was to run the following command (note that the comma - the third argument provided to the command - is significant, as are the spaces around it):

"C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Tools\VMwareResolutionSet.exe" 0 1 , 0 0 3440 1440

After running this, I simply reset the scaling to 100%, logged out and logged back in and everything was correct.

[JWKolkert]

Thank you!! Win10+ VMs all work fine with 3440x1440 resolution but Windows 7 didn't. Tried everything like using Custom Resolution Utility (CRU) (monitortests.com) etc. but nothing worked.

I immediately tried your solution by just executing 

"C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Tools\VMwareResolutionSet.exe" 0 1 , 0 0 3440 1440

and all is well! 

Now I can finally play my old games full screen 🙂