I am using Virtualbox with the "Oracle Extension Pack" (to get USB2.0 etc) on Win10. These tips work just fine on Windows 7 as well.
In the VM config, be sure to set virtual displays to the same number of monitors you have/are using on Windows. Then install the guest addons on your distro and make sure it is working correctly (ex.: you don't need to lock your mouse inside the VM, etc).
Sometimes, "guest addons" version mismatch causes the video driver to do funny stuff or just not work at all, falling back to svga, so I recommend (as much as I dislike this course of action) that you install the same "guest addons" pack on your Linux guest that comes with your instaled VirtualBox. That means not using the distro-packaged version of it (Ubuntu/Debian has the pack on their repos but they are usually outdated).
Also, up the Vm's VIDEO MEMORY to like 128mb or so. It starts too low on VBox's default config and without a big enough framebuffer, even with everything working perfectly you won't see your displays resize to full resolution. If you can make your windows really tiny and the desktop resizes accordingly, but can't make them change size dynamically once you get to a certain point, it's probably lacking virtual video memory.
Are you using VirtualBox? VMWare? I have had hell getting this to work properly.