Changing the Screen Resolution in Windows Server 2008 Server Core

Changing the Screen Resolution in Windows Server 2008 Server Core

Once you install Server Core, and especially after installing VMWare tools, you may find that the screen resolution is amended and you only get a reduced screen as below.

As you can see, you don’t get a vast amount of screen estate and can’t scroll the command box. To fix this, you need to amend the registry. Now, while Server 2008 doesn’t contain many GUI based tools, one of the IS the registry editor. To start up regedit, simply type regedit (or regedt32 if you prefer) and press return. The keys you need to modify are

• HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\{ClassID}000\DefaultSettings.XResolution
  
• HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\{ClassID}000\DefaultSettings.Yresolution
  

The ClassID is a GUID. There is one for each display driver installed on your system. You can tell which one is currently in use as below the 0000 Key you will have another Key called “Volatile Settings”.

So, you need to simply locate the appropriate ClassID for your current driver and, within the Key for that driver, find the DefaultSettings.XResolution and DefaultSettings.YResolution DWord values. You can then change them to appropriate values. When you open one of these values, you will notice that, by default, it is set to Hex.

Click on Decimal to see (and change) the decimal equivalent.

That is, by changing to decimal you can enter X as 1024 and Y as 768 (for example). Indeed, as you are in the registry, you can set ANY values you like, even non-standard ones or values that your card and / or monitor are not capable of displaying. So, choose sensible values (it is a generally non-GUI based O/S after all).

You can now reboot the server (using shutdown /r /f for example) and, after rebooting, you will have your new screen resolution.