Windows 7 resolution issue

[eyelion]

I recently got a new Mac, my first 4K computer. I decided I ought to update my virtual Windows 7, so I reinstalled VMWare Tools.

After I restarted, I found that the resolution had changed. (I'm not sure, but it seems to be a screwed-up 4K size or something.) This wouldn't be a bad thing, but now it runs all my old programs at half size. You see, I use VMWare to play games (ones that don't work in Wine yet), and many of them are old and run in windows at fixed resolutions. But now they're absolutely tiny, making them hard to see. If I try to change the resolution to something smaller, it just makes VMWare as a whole smaller.

So my question is, how do I get Windows back to its old, pixelly resolution? This is kind of beyond me, and Googling didn't bring up anything like this.

[admin]

see below communities link for 4K resolution issue.

Guest resolution issues on Workstation 12 with 4K display 

[eyelion]

So the solution is to change the resolution of my Mac? Sheesh, I hope that gets fixed soon. That makes using VMWare more of a chore than it needs to be...

[bluefirestorm · Accepted solution]

I don't think you have to change the resolution of the host iMac.

Have you tried unchecking the VM Display Setting "Use full resolution for Retina display"?

[eyelion]

Thank goodness, that's fixed it. I don't think I realized that's what the problem was.

I wonder why it didn't come up in the other thread? (Or anywhere else?)

[bluefirestorm]

The other thread was regards to Workstation. I don't even bother to look at what that thread says.

While in general VMs between Fusion and Workstation settings are compatible/interchangeable (you can copy VMs between the two different platforms); there are some subtle differences and among them is the display settings.

Windows/Linux hosts handles high resolution displays and scaling differently from macOS. While Windows 10 has improved in handling display scaling, when compared to macOS it is still behind. One of the symptoms of how display scaling isn't good in Windows and Linux, whether in a physical machine or a VM, is sometimes you would see fonts in an application that is out of proportion in size to other screen elements such such as buttons; either one is too big or too small.