VirtualBox to use dual monitors

Question

I am am running Kubuntu Hardy Heron, with a dual monitor setup, and have VirtualBox on it running Windows XP in seamless mode.

My problem is, I can't get virtualbox to extend to the second monitor. Has anyone been able to achieve this or know if it can be achieved?

Answer 1

VirtualBox 3.2.1 supports multiple guest monitors. The documentation was not clear on how to enable this.

Basic Setup:

1. Power off your virtual machine if it's on.
2. From the main VirtualBox window, select your VM and choose Settings.
3. Choose display.
4. Below "Video Memory" is Monitor Count. Slide it to 2, and adjust your video memory if VirtualBox complains.
5. Start your guest and perform the standard "Extend the desktop onto this display" method based on the Guest OS. (Guest Additions need to be installed.)
6. A second "Oracle VM VirtualBox" window will appear with the second display. You can resize it however you want.

Seamless/Fullscreen

1. Enter Seamless or Fullscreen. I'll assume your HostKey is the default RightCtrl.
2. If the screens are on the wrong displays, hit RightCtrl+Home.
3. From the View Menu, choose Virtual Display 1 and set it to the Host display you want. The other displays will shuffle around to accommodate this. If you have more than 2 virtual displays, repeat with Virtual Display 2 and so on.

Headless

1. Set the number of monitors with VBoxManage modifyvm "vm name" --monitorcount X
2. Enable multiple vrdp connections with VBoxManage modifyvm "VM name" --vrdpmulticon on
3. Use VBoxHeadless to launch as normal.
4. connect to monitor 1 with rdesktop -d \@1 ip-address-of-host and monitor 2 with rdesktop -d \@2 ip-address-of-host. This is explained in lomaxx's answer. (You might be able to use @ instead of \@, depending on your shell)

Answer 2

This should help.

Answer 3

I am running Debian Sid and i was able to get windows 7 and xp to run in seamless in dual monitor mode, with 3D acceleration, you need to install your guest additions in safe mode.

the steps i took were:

install os with dual screens enabled already, if your o/s is already installed i am unsure if you will get support, though i would recommend following the below to do so.

after install hit F8 while booting up windows

select run in safemode with networking (networking isnt really needed, but thats the step i took)

then install guest additions 32bit (dual screens works in 64 but 3D does not) reboot and you should have dual screens available with 3D support on One monitor (:1)

i couldn't get it to work on both. I did Not have vrdp enabled to do this and it worked just fine.

Answer 4

AFAIK you can only use multiple monitors in the following instances:

1. Multiple monitors currently work only with Windows XP guests, and Guest Additions must be installed, as the implementation resides in the Guest Additions video driver.

2. Multiple monitors work only with the VBoxHeadless frontend. You must also enable VRDP multiconnection mode (see chapter 7.4.6, VRDP multiple connections, page 94) to access two or more VM displays when the guest is using multiple monitors.

From the Manual