Can't Turn Off Automatic Display Scaling

[CL04K]

Hello,

help would be appreciated on the following.

I'm using VMware Workstation 16 Player version 16.2.0 build-18760230. I created a Windows 10 virtual machine which I'm using on a Windows 10 host. VMWare Tools are also installed.

I want to set a specific resolution for the mentioned virtual machine which should not change when VMWare Workstation Player window is resized. I tried unchecking the "Automatically adjust user interface size in the virtual machine" option in the "Virtual Machine Settings > Display > Display scaling" but it doesn't seem to work as shown in this video. I have restarted the host PC and the virtual machine several times and it didn't help. Only if VMWare Tools service is stopped inside the virtual machine, the automatic display scaling is successfully disabled.

Does anyone know why unchecking the display scaling option doesn't actually turn it off?

Thanks for the help.

[wila · Accepted solution]

Hi,

If the standard options don't work.. there's always the sledge hammer approach.

For automatically resizing the display a feature in VMware Tools is used.

This part calls the binary VMwareResolutionSet.exe in the folder C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Tools

Renaming that file will disable the automatic display scaling.

--
Wil

[CL04K]

Thanks for the reply.

I tried renaming the resolution tool as you suggested and it works as expected – the guest resolution is no longer changed automatically when WMware Workstation Player window is resized. The solution is good enough for me.

[Bart13]

You actually want on purpose the issue I'm having for over a month now. I checked if this VMwareResolutionSet.exe was properly named and it is so I'm still confused on why it doesn't want to auto-adjust the guest OS screen size / to automatically scale the display.

I posted a separate topic about: https://communities.vmware.com/t5/VMware-Workstation-Player/VMware-Workstation-16-Player-doesn-t-aut...

[PeppercornFox]

I have found the easiest way to disable display scaling is by adding the following line to the related .vmx file

guestInfo.svga.wddm.modeset="FALSE"