Windows 10 resolution in Parallels on retina Macbook

I've seen several posts about Windows 10 (and 8/8.1) scaling up on retina Macbooks, but none really outlining everything or answering my question directly. I've got a 13" retina Macbook Pro, running Windows 10 on Parallels. When I first installed, the resolution was set very low by default so I went to change it but noticed the highest resolution I can pick is 1920x1200.

So my question is this:

Should I be able to choose a higher resolution since my retina display is 2560x1600? I've set it to the highest available (1920x1200) and changed the "text, app, and other items" size to 125% but it doesn't look as crisp as everything on the Mac side. Is there anything else I can do to increase the display resolution/quality?

Or has anyone tried this with bootcamp and had different results? It could be the drivers from Parallels.

I realize this is a preview build of Windows 10, I just want to make sure I'm not missing something.

UPDATE:

I forgot to mention that in the Parallels settings, under Hardware -> Video, I've checked the box for "Enable Retina Resolution", but I haven't seen a difference, even after logging out & back in and shutting down the vm and restarting it.

lhan

Posted 2015-06-13T04:22:14.540

Reputation: 155

Did you verify the guest video driver is properly installed? – Daniel B – 2015-06-13T15:37:57.100

thanks for the idea, do you know how I could check that? – lhan – 2015-06-13T15:49:16.793

I’m not familiar with Parallels. Did you install the guest additions or whatever it’s called? – Daniel B – 2015-06-13T16:32:40.773

I don't believe so, it all goes through the Parallels wizard. I'll do some more digging. – lhan – 2015-06-13T18:56:03.503

Answers

I used to have the same issue on my Macbook 15" retina,

I did the following;

From parallers windows machine settings, hardware tab, I selected best for retina.
The windows display resolution 3840 X 2400. "Too small obviously"
I selected the text size to 175%. "by default it was 300%"

Ghaleb Badran

Posted 2015-06-13T04:22:14.540

Reputation: 26

On Windows 10 for me the Parallel Tools weren't installed after the machine was set up. If you click on the parallel bars in the top left on MacOS and go to Actions sub-menu and it says "Install Parallel Tools" then they never installed correctly on the VM OS.

The other thing I found is that for Windows 10 the tools wouldn't install and kept saying an error occurred (with no info) and I needed to reboot. This was addressed by right clicking the DVD drive file "PTAgent" and choosing "Run As Administrator"

Hope this is helpful.

Matthew Erwin

Posted 2015-06-13T04:22:14.540

Reputation: 21

Great info - glad you got it working. I've since switched to Bootcamp but I'll revisit this thread if I ever decide to try a vm again :) – lhan – 2017-07-24T13:00:48.377

Here is a link to the KB article from the parallels.com website:http://kb.parallels.com/112609

– benhorgen – 2017-12-05T19:51:44.340