The VM opens in a little window, the desktop is squeezed into a small fixed size, and the resolution list inside Windows offers nothing bigger. It feels like a broken VM. It is actually one missing driver - the VMware SVGA driver that arrives with VMware Tools - plus one Workstation setting most people never touch.
A guest without VMware Tools falls back to a basic display adapter that only knows a few small, fixed resolutions. No Windows setting can invent sizes the driver does not offer. That is why the video treats display problems as driver problems first. Fix the driver, then set Workstation to Autofit Guest, and the VM screen simply follows your window from then on.
Windows can only offer resolutions that the display driver reports. The fallback basic driver reports a short list of small sizes, so the guest feels locked in a tiny box. This is expected behaviour for a VM without Tools - not a fault in Windows, not a fault in your monitor, and not something a registry tweak will cure. The cure is the real driver.
Open the VM menu and choose Install VMware Tools, run the setup inside the guest, and reboot the VM. The reboot matters: the VMware SVGA 3D driver takes over the display only after it. Back in the guest, open Device Manager and confirm the display adapter now reads VMware SVGA 3D. If it still shows the basic adapter, the Tools install failed - reinstall it cleanly before doing anything else.
With the real driver in place, stop picking resolutions by hand. In Workstation open View, then Autosize, and enable Autofit Guest. Now dragging the Workstation window bigger stretches the guest desktop to match, and full screen means your real full screen. This is the behaviour people expect from a VM, and it is entirely driven by Tools plus this one menu.
If the display now resizes but flickers, tears, or goes black when apps open, open VM Settings, then Display and look at Accelerate 3D graphics. On some host graphics drivers this acceleration misbehaves; unticking it is a legitimate diagnostic step and many office VMs run permanently and happily without it. If the screen is perfect with 3D off, you have found your culprit - leave it off for that VM.
On high-resolution host displays, a guest can look blurry or oddly scaled even with everything correct in the VM. That is host DPI scaling, not the guest. Keep the host display driver updated from the laptop or graphics maker's site, and be honest about expectations: a VM window is a rendered picture of another computer, and one level of scaling softness on unusual host resolutions is normal.
The video fixes display and resolution problems on a real VM, including the driver side - watch it to see the before and after.
Watch Full VideoBecause the basic fallback driver does not offer it. Once VMware Tools installs the SVGA driver and you reboot, the list fills in - and with Autofit Guest enabled, the guest simply matches the Workstation window size instead of any fixed list at all.
Usually host-side scaling on a high-DPI display rather than a guest fault. Confirm Tools and Autofit are working, update the host graphics driver, and accept that a heavily scaled VM window will never be quite as crisp as the host desktop itself.
That is Autofit being off or Tools not running. Enable View, Autosize, Autofit Guest, make sure the VMware Tools service is running in the guest, and the desktop will stretch to fill the monitor when you enter full screen.