Guest OS not resizing display to fill VM Window

[Tony_Goodhew]

Hi All,

I could have sworn that the guest VM will change the display resolution to fit the VM Window on the host but now I'm seeing that the guest OS is always sitting at the same resolution.

Have I changed something somewhere to turn this function off or am I just imagining that it did this before?

I have VMWare Tools installed and the icon shows it running in the system tray - I have the same experience on Windows XP, Windows 7 and Windows 10 guest OSes.

Any guidance appreciated.

Thanks,

TonyG

[wila · Accepted solution]

Hi Tony,

That depends on a setting.

In VMware Workstation go to -> Edit -> Preferences -> Display -> Autofit guest

--
Wil

[eeeehaw]

I am having trouble trying to get my VM guest OS display size to auto-fit the VM Workstation 12 Pro windows as follows. 

-> Edit -> Preferences -> Display -> Autofit guest  is NOT working

-> VM -> Settings -> Display is on "auto" and all options for that are greyed out, ie I cannot change them

I am running VMware Workstation 12 Pro on Windows 10 Pro 64b host OS, ASUS Q534U laptop with 4K display and with Nvidia Geforce GTX 950M GPU (latest driver); guest OS is Ubuntu 16.04-LTS 64b SERVER.  VMware Tools have been installed (twice, since I was prompted to upgrade to a newer version).

The laptop display is set for 3840x2160-60Hz resolution in the Intel & Nvidia drivers.

I can get my VM guest OS display to auto resize when running Ubuntu 16 Desktop (only after installing VMware Tools).  But Ubuntu 16 Server bash display is so tiny I nearly need a magnifying glass to see it; I'm constantly going back and forth between the "console" view just to clearly see what's in the display (and I can't type in my commands in the Console view, which is another problem, when I type a character or click on the console, it reverts and I'm back to the tiny guest window).  Not very usable.

I have a student with a new Dell laptop, also with a hi-res 4K display, that is experiencing exactly the same problem.

Any ideas how I can fix this failure of auto-fit?

[Bart13]

I have the same issue but with VMware Workstation 16 Player and it doesn't have the Autofit guest option. It did work in the past though, but since an update mid-March it doesn't auto-adjust the screen size of my VM window.

[Russell_Page]

I had this problem with VMware 15 Pro, Windows 7 Host + Windows 7 guest. The fix that worked was to reinstall VMware Tools and selecting the "Repair" option.

[Kacey01]

I had this issue with VMware 17 Pro, ESXi Host, Windows Server 2019 Guest. The fix that worked was to reinstall VMware Tools and selecting the "Repair" option also. Thanks!