Unable to configure Custom Display Resolution/Dual Monitor Topology in Windows virtual machines

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• Unable to change the screen resolution of a Microsoft Windows virtual machine beyond the maximum resolution available in Display Properties.
• Number of displays is set (Edit settings of the VM > Expand video card > No.of displays) however attempting to extend displays within the operating system does not detect additional displays.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 6.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 7.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 8.x

Cause

This issue can occur when the screen resolution is incorrectly set or is missing for one or more displays within the guest operating system.

Resolution

To resolve this issue:

1. Follow the procedure outlined in Adding video resolution modes to Windows guest operating systems.
2. Open an Administrative Command prompt and navigate to the VMware Tools Folder.

Note: The default location is %ProgramFiles%\VMware\VMware Tools.

3. Run VMwareResolution.exe to force Windows to set the desired resolution.

VMwareResolutionSet.exe Variable1 Variable2 , Variable3 Variable4 Variable5 Variable6

Variable 1 is the index of the primary monitor (Default = 0).
Variable 2 is the number of total monitors (Default = 1).
Variable 3 is the starting X position of monitor 0 (Default = 0).
Variable 4 is the starting Y position of monitor 0 (Default = 0).
Variable 5 is the width (X) of monitor 0 in pixels.
variable 6 is the width (Y) of monitor 0 in pixels.

For Example: 

To set the virtual machine display resolution to 3280 x 2048:

VMwareResolutionSet.exe 0 1 , 0 0 3280 2048

To set a virtual machine with two monitors side-by-side, one at 1920x1200 and one at 1600x1200:

VMwareResolutionSet.exe 0 2 , 0 0 1920 1200 , 1920 0 1600 1200