virtualbox - Switch android x86 screen resolution

Question

I would like to use Android-x86 2.2 as an emulator on my Windows 7. I have downloaded VirtualBox and the ISO, and I've made a virtual machine with it, but I can't set the resolution to 320x480 or something similar.

The following tutorial "Using the Android-x86 Port as your Emulator" suggests to insert:

<ExtraDataItem name="CustomVideoMode2" value="320x480x16" />

to my .vbox file and I did it. Then I added UVESA_MODE=320x480 and vga=ask to the boot config. When it boots, I have to press Enter to see the available options, but there is no 320x480 among them. How can I get it to work?

Answer 1

To change the Android-x86 screen resolution on VirtualBox you need to:

1. Add custom screen resolution:
   Android <6.0:

   VBoxManage setextradata "VM_NAME_HERE" "CustomVideoMode1" "320x480x16"
   

   Android >=6.0:

   VBoxManage setextradata "VM_NAME_HERE" "CustomVideoMode1" "320x480x32"
   

2. Figure out what is the ‘hex’-value for your VideoMode:
   2.1. Start the VM
   2.2. In GRUB menu enter a (Android >=6.0: e)
   2.3. In the next screen append vga=ask and press Enter
   2.4. Find your resolution and write down/remember the 'hex'-value for Mode column

3. Translate the value to decimal notation (for example 360 hex is 864 in decimal).

4. Go to menu.lst and modify it:
   4.1. From the GRUB menu select Debug Mode
   4.2. Input the following:

   mount -o remount,rw /mnt  
   cd /mnt/grub  
   vi menu.lst
   

   4.3. Add vga=864 (if your ‘hex’-value is 360). Now it should look like this:

   kernel /android-2.3-RC1/kernel quiet root=/dev/ram0 androidboot_hardware=eeepc acpi_sleep=s3_bios,s3_mode DPI=160 UVESA_MODE=320x480 SRC=/android-2.3-RC1 SDCARD=/data/sdcard.img vga=864

   4.4. Save it:

   :wq
   

5. Unmount and reboot:

   cd /
   umount /mnt
   reboot -f
   

Hope this helps.