make Windows 8 CP look native in Virtualbox

Hi all.

I recently encountered another hassle in attempting to perfect my Window 8 machine. setting the virtual machine's screen resolution to fit my laptop screen (16:9) dimensions and resolution (1600X900X32bit) proved to be challenging.

I'm not the guy to run away from such a challenge.

Due to the Beta nature of the OS it was not surprising that Virtualbox's guest addition (Ver. 4.1.8), dose not yet support display dimensions that differ from 4:3

although there is the option of using the "scale mode" <host key+> it doesn't quite cut it.

 Disregarding the annoying host top window bar, the font looks stretched and it's just not it :( no worries, there is a solution:

Shut down all of your Virtual machines and VirtualBox too (not mandatory for linux or Mac hosts).

for windows hosts:
open the command line interface type the following line:

in c:\Program Files\Oracle\virtualBox>

...>VBoxManage.exe setextradata "MachinName" CustomVideoMode1 1600x900x32

for Linux hosts:
open terminal and type

:~$VBoxManage setextradata "MachineName" CustomVideoMode1 1600x900x32

 * replace MachineName with the name of your Virtual machine
Lo and behold ... it works (you can obviously use your favorite screen settings [Hight]x[Width]x[Depth]).

  

so now i can actually use the full extent of my screen.

 ... Oh Joy

G.