Parallels Desktop 7, Dynamic screen resolution adjustment

M

Mitchoff

Member
Dynamic screen resolution adjustment is not working for me in Parallels Desktop 7 (it has worked for me when using previous versions).

Host OS: Lion
Guest OS: Windows XP

The section about video settings in the help file for Parallels Desktop 7 is incomprehensible and pretty much useless.
Poor writing, poor explanations.

According to the dialog that is displayed when I select "Virtual Machine" > "Reinstall Parallels Tools", the name of this feature is "dynamic screen resolution adjustment" but there is no mention of it in the Parallels knowledgebase nor in the help file.
 
Dynamic screen resolution adjustment

Long story short: I solved the issue. Read on if you'd like to know more.

This is regarding Windowed Mode (is that the right term?) -- i.e., not Coherence mode, Full Screen mode, or Modality mode.

I believe "Dynamic screen resolution adjustment" is the feature that automatically adjusts the screen size of the guest OS whenever you resize the Parallels Desktop window in Windowed Mode. The only place where I could find any reference to this feature or its name is in the dialog displayed when you select "Reinstall Parallel Tools" from the Virtual Machine menu.

"Parallels Tools are required for features that provide better integration of your Mac and Windows, like Coherence, automatic mouse capture and dynamic screen resolution adjustment."

If this feature isn't working, you get either scroll bars (when the guest OS screen is larger than the PD window) or black borders (when the guest OS screen is smaller than the PD window).

Here's the problem I had, and how I fixed it.

Problem:
When using Windowed mode (see above), the guest OS screen screen size is larger than the size of the Parallels Desktop window, so the guest OS screen is truncated. Scroll bars on the right and bottom of the window allow you to scroll and display the parts of the screen that don't fit in the PD window. (In this situation, Coherence mode is also not available.)

Solution:
This virtual machine is a Boot Camp partition. It seems the video card drivers I had installed for when booting natively in Windows XP were causing the problem.

1. After starting the virtual machine in Parallels Desktop, I uninstalled all video drivers and shutdown the virtual machine.
2. Next I booted natively (Boot Camp) and deleted Parallels Tools.
3. I started the virtual machine in PD again, and reinstalled Parallels Tools.

Dynamic screen resolution adjustment and Coherence mode are now both available again.
I have not reinstalled the video card drivers on the Boot Camp partition however. I will leave that for another day.
 
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