Virtual PC and the lack of Maximize button

Nowadays, it's unbelievable that an application has the Maximize button disabled. Even more if it's an application I use everyday and which most of the time NEEDS to be maximized.

Resizing the stupid window so that it fits the entire desktop area of my laptop, and at the same time trying the resolution in the guest OS to fit instead of show scrollbars is one of the most annoying experiences I have with Virtual PC every damn day...

9 Comments

  • Stupid question, but have you tried 'Right Alt'+Enter? This doesn't work for me because of my bizzare laptop resolution (1680x1050), but it always did on normal 4x3 resolutions.

  • That is for making the VPC take the *full* screen, that is, completely hiding my host OS Start menu and taskbar. That's now what I want. In addition, if you're working in that full screen mode and you receive an email, an IM, or anything in the host, the VPC will exist fullscreen automatically, which is incredibly annoying if you get many mails (yes... someone will say 'why don't you turn on the desktop alers?'... the point is that I DO want to receive them!).



    So, maximizing the VPC so that it takes your desktop space, but not your taskbar, is not the same as running full-screen. And there's no easy and fast way of maximizing the stupid VPC... :S

  • Maybe you could write a small app that'll call ShowWindow with SW_MAXIMIZE on the VPC main HWND?

  • I agree with what you say. One way to get the full-screen button is to mstsc onto the vpc (i.e. if the vpc is running windows 2k+) and then resize the mstsc window.

  • Try double-clicking on the edge of the VirtualPC window (where the pointer turns into the cursor)

    ;-)

  • The point is that I DON'T want full screen. I want MAXIMIZED window. There's a very important difference between the two: I don't want to lose my host task bar!!!

  • Hi dcazzulino,

    Did you succeed with your attempt? I am also looking for MAXMIZING and not making it FULL SCREEN. It is for this reason, I am still using VMWare Server.

  • Nope, unfortunately even VPC 2007 still hasn't learned the difference between maximize and fullscreen.

    I'm so happy with VMWare that I don't care anymore. Screw VPC.

  • I couldn't agree more! I like VPC, it actually feels pretty fast for me compared to VMware Server. But the lack of a maximize window button is EXTREMELY frustrating and disturbing!

    The other thing is the lack of ability to resize the main VPC Console screen. If you have long virtual machine names that begin with the same string (e.g., "Windows XP Professional SP2 - ...") you can't actually tell the difference between them unless you go into the VM's Settings to check its name. Great usability design! :(

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