How to enable higher Windows VGA resolutions on both your monitor and your Supermicro Remote Console

If you are running Windows 8, 8.1, or 10, or Windows Server 2012R2 or 2016, you will likely quickly notice you're seemingly stuck at a rather anemic 800x600 resolution. Ok, you're not gaming on your server, but these days, it's also rather hard to get any real UI work done at that resolution. This limitation is rather obvious whether you're using a locally attached monitor, or coming in over your management network to get to the Remote Console/IPMI/iKVM.

Worry not, the fix was easy, once I found where the driver is buried on Supermicro's driver support pages, under Windows, instead of under Windows 10. Here's the details.

Step-by-step fix

1. Download v1.03.zip from Supermicro support's ftp site:
   ftp://ftp.supermicro.com/driver/VGA/ASPEED/v1.03.zip
   (or just type bit.ly/ssvgadriver into your remote system, it redirects to this ftp download)
2. Extract the v1.03.zip file you just downloaded
3. Press Win+R, type devmgmt.msc to launch Device Manager
4. Under Display adapters, right-click on Microsoft Basic Display Adapter, select Update Driver Software...
5. Choose Browse my computer for driver software, Locate and install driver software manually.
6. Navigate to the extracted driver's directory, such as c:\Users\username\Downloads\v1.03\Win10_x64 then select Next
7. When prompted if you'd like to install the ASPEED Display Adapter, choose yes
8. You are now able to change to a higher resolution, as high as 1920 x 1200. With more recent versions of Windows, no reboot is required.

Step-by-step fix video

June 01 2016 Update

Thanks to Bob Holowenko for his YouTube comment:

It's important to note that this will cause more bandwidth to be used. If you are doing this across a WAN you may not want to do this...

So keep this in mind when choosing your settings, and use alternatives like RDP or VNC wherever possible.

Oct 27 2016 Update

New 1.03 driver spotted at the FTP site:
ftp://ftp.supermicro.com/driver/VGA/ASPEED/
article above updated accordingly, with an older driver 9.0.10.102 spotted in the \v1.03\Win10_x64 directory, but the year-newer driver 9.0.10.103 is located in the \v1.03\Windows WDDM\Win2016 directory. Simply pointing the the parent directory \v1.03\ and letting it automatically choose the right subdirectory seems to work out just fine.

Apr 24 2017 Update

Fixed a typo in the downloaded filename.

See also at TinkerTry

• Order a TinkerTry'd Supermicro SuperServer Bundle - powerful and efficient home virtualization lab solutions

• What fits in any home virtualization lab, has 8 Xeon cores, 6 drives, 128 GB memory, and 3 4K outputs from a Windows 10 VM? Your new Supermicro SuperServer Workstation!

See also

Find "Download the Latest Drivers and Utilities" on either the SuperServer's page:

• Supermicro | Products | Motherboards | Xeon® Boards | 5028D-TN4T

or the motherboard's page:

• Supermicro | Products | Motherboards | Xeon® Boards | X10SDV-TLN4F