Question VMware Workstation Player and Windows XP Professional Resolution

Hexa Fox

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Hey guys, I got some help from this community about a year ago. Basically what I wanted to do is get some operating systems running in a virtual environment on my main computer. I like to mess around with other operating systems and the main reason I selected Windows XP first was to be able to play some old games that are refusing to work on Windows 10 no matter what. Anyway I got one of the games running on the virtual Windows XP system. However, after the game launches it reverts the resolution back to a small box in the middle of the screen, it is pretty annoying. Especially since I have made it this far.

I have already changed some settings in both the Control Panel of the virtual machine and the actual VMware settings themselves. So Windows XP is fitting the screen perfectly now with no noticeable stretching or distortion. I have tried many things to get the game to launch and fit to the screen, but nothing seems to work. The game does not seem to have any settings to adjust this either, unless I am missing it.

1.) Does anyone have any ideas of how I can get the game to meet the resolution of the monitor or the virtual machine?

2.) I am looking for other software to create more virtual environments. I am in the Information Systems Security field and need to increase my knowledge of other operating systems. Such as Linux and Macintosh. I know there are many versions of Linux I can mess around with, I have been told Ubuntu more than once, but there are many versions of that too correct? I would like to purchase a cheaper version of a Macintosh system. Can you guys recommend anything for that? I guess it should be as recent as possible if I want to familiarize myself with it. However, I do not want to spend a lot of money for something I am just going to mess around with on a virtual environment.
 
A lot of old games will only run at 800x600 or even lower if the game is even older.
That's the highest resolution that was around back then so a lot of coders didn't even consider that resolutions could go up in the future.
You should be running XP at a lower resolution anyway,nobody had 1080p back in those days.

If you don't want games to change your resolution you will have to use dxwnd or similar to force the games to run in a window instead of fullscreen,I realise from what you write that this isn't what you want but that's all you can do.
Some games have patches to run at modern resolutions but if the game had a patch like that it would also run under windows 10.
 

Hexa Fox

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A lot of old games will only run at 800x600 or even lower if the game is even older.

Yeah I did some research and figured out a little bit yesterday after messing around with it. This game actually has two settings, one for 800x600 and the other for 1024x768. The way you switch between them is sort of hidden, you just click on the 800x600 and it changes it. It definitely makes it a lot bigger. It fills the monitor vertically and I would say 60% or 75% vertically. So the game is much more 'playable' now than before.

The thing about lower resolutions is you waste a portion of your monitor if you have a newer higher resolution monitor. Correct? I would rather stretch the old version a little bit and have it fit to the screen as a trade off. I cannot even really tell the difference.
 
Sometimes you can can change the resolution by editing ini files that are somewhat "hidden" but this can cause issues ,for example if the onscreen display or the menu isn't made to change to other resolutions it's not gonna fit anymore and is going to look weird.

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