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Hummy123
Contributor
Contributor

Multiple monitors not working with vmware workstation player 16

Hi,

with latest vmware workstation player 15 version I could create ubuntu 20.04 VM, install open-vm-tools-deskop and use multiple monitors of my host.

With player 16 that is not possible anymore. Nothing happens if I select another option, the VM remains running on just one display. Within the VM, I can also see only 1 display.

This is reproducible with latest vmware workstation player 16, Windows 10 1809 and Ubuntu 20.04 as guest.

31 Replies
Hummy123
Contributor
Contributor

An update:

I have a laptop connected to two external displays (through a docking station).

If I disable the laptop display in windows settings, (so that only the two external displays are used) then using both displays seems to work in the VM.

FYI I did try to set the laptop display on the same "height" as the other two in the display settings, that did not help.

So currently if I want to use two displays in the VM I need to disable the laptop display...

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ankurdubey521
Contributor
Contributor

Facing the exact same issue with similar observations. Cycle through multiple displays simply does nothing when two external monitors asre connected, but works well when only one external monitor is connected

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Racle90
Contributor
Contributor

Same problem here.
I'm using 3 monitors. With workstation player 15 they worked just fine.

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jayaarkay
Contributor
Contributor

I have a similar issue with Workstation 16 Pro. My workstation grade laptop, running Windows 10, is connected to 3 monitors. The laptop screen is off/closed all the time. Out of the  3 monitors I use 2 for my Ubuntu VM. With Workstation 15 Pro I had no issues with this setup, but after upgrading to 16 Pro the layout keeps switching, every few minutes, to use just one monitor.

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FranzMatze
Contributor
Contributor

Same here. I use a Dell XPS 15 with a Docking Station and two additional screens. However, I cannot use more than one screen with VMware Player 16. This was working with VMware Player 15 before upgrading.

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jayaarkay
Contributor
Contributor

Also, for me the "monitor layout" button is grayed out, giving an impression that it is disabled, even though I can click it and choose a layout; which then keeps switching on me anyway.

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jayaarkay
Contributor
Contributor

Here is the a screenshot...

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CoNetrix
Contributor
Contributor

I am also having this issue where my monitor layout arbitrarily switches from 2 monitors back to a  single monitor. I did not have this problem with Workstation version 15.  I am running various Windows desktops and servers as guest on a Windows 10 (10.0.19041.630  a.k.a 2020H2)  O/S on a Lenovo P1 laptop.

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darksidemaze
Contributor
Contributor

Did any of the contributors on here, ever get a resolution?

 

Seeing similar problems ie 2 monitors work, with single cycle monitor button in the toolbar but 3+ monitors show the popup window layout window and selecting one of the layouts doesnt many any changes.

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darksidemaze
Contributor
Contributor

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RockyRodrigo
Contributor
Contributor

Hi,

I'm having the same issue, (vmware workstation 16)multi monitor switches back to a single monitor. Can't find anything that triggers it.

Any Solution?

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vsixs
Contributor
Contributor

Sharing my workaround.

  1. Uninstall Player 16
  2. Install Player 15
    Download from: https://my.vmware.com/group/vmware/downloads/info/slug/desktop_end_user_computing/vmware_workstation...
  3. Uncheck "Check for product updates"
  4. NOTES:
    • Disable vmware updates in other applications. In my case Kaspersky is updating my applications automatically in the background, so I had to manually disable vmware updates in Kaspersky settings.
    • If you get an error about unsupported hardware version when opening a VM:
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Samir_TSystems
Contributor
Contributor

I also had this problem, that when using 2 displays suddenly it would on it's own switch to only one.

The cause seemed to be that the "main" VM window (the one where you press the button to have two displays) needs to be on the main display configured in windows (basically the one that has your windows start menu etc.). In this case, it never switched back to one display for me again.

FranzMatze
Contributor
Contributor

Still not fixed with VMware player 16.1.2.

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TomClay
Contributor
Contributor

Has anyone found the solution to this?

We have multiple matching laptops. On some the multi monitor works fine, on others you click to select 2 or 3 screens, nothing. Checked vmware tools is up to date and that workstation player is up to date, 16.1.2. Drivers match too.

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RockyRodrigo
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks, that fixed my Problem. It is not satisfying, but this way it is not that annoying like falling back to one screen 20 times a day

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jgoldvm
Contributor
Contributor

I've had the same problem.  This is my setup;

  1. Motherboard: ASUS X570-Pro Wifi.
  2. Processor: AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 16-Core
  3. Graphics Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1050
  4. OS: Linux Mint 20.3 Cinnamon running 5.13.0-39-generic kernel
  5. Graphics Driver: nvidia-driver-510 version 510.54-0ubuntu0.20.04.1
  6. VMWare: Workstation Pro Version 16.2.3 build-19376536
  7. Monitors: 3 Samsung 43" 4k TV's plugged into the Gigabyte's three HDMI ports.
  8. Guest OS: Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC build 19044.1645 (Windows LTSC 2021)

This is a new build. I had these monitors working on my old machine running VMware Workstation 14 but I remember it took a lot of fiddling to finally get it to work. Nothing has changed with this build.

It actually seemed to work correctly at first but something happened and it went all wonky.  I could run windows full screen on one monitor. When I clicked on the button all the displays would blink but Windows would still show up on just the one display.  Strangely, the Windows guest would think it had two monitors. It seemed like it was running both monitor sessions on the same display one behind the other so the second display could not be accessed.

I tried a bunch of things to fix it including upgrading *everything*: drivers, vmware tools, kernel, etc. Nothing seemed to help.  Whenever I would change the Linux graphic driver I noticed that the display layout would change.  I'd have to go into the Linux Mint display settings and move things around so that Linux would show the left, center and right monitors in the correct order.

That gave me an idea. I figured that somewhere internally there was a default monitor order that the OS was mapping into the real order and maybe VMWare wasn't following that mapping. I also noticed that when I told Linux to reset the monitors to their defaults it would mess up the order.  I decided to try plugging the monitors in the order they came up on the defaults instead of telling Linux to logically move them around.  That took some trial and error because it seems like the order changes if you plug them in while the machine was running. I had to power off the machine and switch the plugs around until it came up correctly when I powered it up.

After doing that it started kind of working.  Not every time but sometimes.  I finally found a combination that worked for me. I would have to start with the guest OS full screen on the center monitor and then click the cycle button once. That would run Windows on the center and right monitor and I can keep the left monitor running Linux.

I think VMWare support for multiple monitors is buggy at best. It may work better if you have Windows as the host OS. I imagine that it's difficult to get it working correctly on Linux with all the variations of graphics cards and drivers. Still it seems like it's been bad for a long time and I wish they'd spend some time working on it. In my experience at least it's been very easy to reproduce.  It's taken many hours of work to NOT reproduce it.

I'm just posting this in case it might help someone else. 

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fbman
Contributor
Contributor

Hi

I also have problems with this. Another issue was that if I minimized VmWare when having it on my external display, it always moved to my internal display when maximized again. This issue is gone after uninstalling + removing configuration and reinstall afterwards.

This might be a long shot, but could it be that the configuration gets corrupt in some way when just upgrading? The problem with vmware on multiple displays is still there though so if I'm right, then all config is not removed when uninstalling. I haven't heard any colleague of mine that have this problem when installing on a fresh machine...

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TomClay
Contributor
Contributor

We think we might have a solution.

We are now running Workstation Player version 16.2.3. If you open Player > File > Preferences and choose the "Color Theme": "Light" rather than using "System" multi monitor starts working again.

This has been successful on multiple computers.