Guest Windows XP screen has wrong aspect ratio

Question

I'm running Linux Mint Qiana as the host on a new HP 250 G laptop with 4GB of Ram and a 500GB hard drive. The laptop has a screen aspect ratio of 16:9. This is new to me because it's my first laptop and all my desktops have 4:3 screens.

I've set up a Virtual Machine using VirtualBox and installed Windows XP Service Pack 3 as the guest operating system in the virtual machine. The problem is I can't get the XP window to fit nicely on the screen because XP thinks I'm using a 4:3 display. Windows apparently does not know about the existing monitor because it's set up for Default Monitor.

As XP was released about twelve years before my HP Laptop came into existence, this is not surprising. Are there any Windows geeks out there who could give me a fix, or can it be done using VirtualBox?

Answer 1

As suggested in the comments, yes install the guest additions into the VM guest and you'll be able to dynamically resize the VM to whatever sizes you want on the fly.

The relevant documentation from VirtualBox: Chapter 4. Guest Additions. This tutorial is also easy to follow, titled: How do I install VirtualBox Guest Additions on Windows 7?. They're still applicable even though they're geared for Windows 7. The steps are essentially the same.

    

Answer 2

By default Windows assumes a generic display driver with a few standard options for resolution. In order to play nicely with VirtualBox, you need a video driver that knows something about its actual output device, in this case allowing it to scale to whatever size you run the virtual machine window at.

This can be done by installing the VirtualBox Additions package to your guest OS. Check the VirtualBox toolbar overlayed on your guest OS for the option to install these.