For some reason, when I start AOL on our computer (Win XP) it vanishes off the side of the monitor screen. The taskbar at the bottom shows that the program is running, but when I hit “restore” it looks like the window maximizes off to the side where I can’t see it at all to drag it back where it belongs. Other programs open right where they’re supposed to. Restarting the computer does not help. (I had to open the Chiff board on Internet Explorer to write this) Help!
To be honest, you’re much better off using IE or firefox instead of AOL’s inbuilt browser anyway.
It’s a strange problem though, don’t think it should be possible for an application to display off the screen like that. Maybe check your display settings are correct and everything is setup properly (including your monitor display menus).
For a temporary band-aid, try right clicking on your toolbar and selecting either “Tile windows horizontally” or “Tile windows vertically” - this should take all open windows and distribute them about your screen, and hopefully AOL will be visible and you can resize it to the way you want it.
I’ve never used AOL so I don’t really know what might be causing that.
Oh yeah, forgot you can do that.
What I’d assume is happening is that you’ve resized the window at some point and dragged it by accident off the screen. When you click the maximise/restore down button beside the close window cross it will remember your last window resize setting and ping the window back to where it was, in this case it was off the screen.
What happens if you right click, select restore, then right click again and select maximise? Does it revert to the full screen display?
That worked. Thanks Ava.
My wife had AOL running (but not online) and started playing a game. When she closed the game, AOL was AWOL…
OK, this is getting frustrating. Ava’s fix worked OK, but now it’s a different program that is running somewhere off the screen (the synchronization program for my Sony Ericsson phone). This time, right clicking on the tool bar does not give me the option of different tilings, so I can’t use this trick. Other programs seem to load and run properly.
I think those danged Java games are screwing our computer up. Is there any way to verify this?
have you tried
Alt Spacebar
M
what allows you to Move a window with the cursor keys…
It’s quite possible for an application to display off the screen . . . if it thinks there is screen over there.
Is there something making your system think you have two monitors? Or an extra-wide one? Perhaps your games are resetting something wider than it should be?
At work, I have two. If I am roaming around and happen to use another networked computer with just one monitor, anything I left on the right-side monitor at my desk zips off to the right and vanishes. The new computer picks up my settings off the network and applies them faithfully. If the new computer has just one screen, but has the capability for two, it thinks it actually has two. It was most disturbing the first time it happened. The tile trick has worked, so far, to get things back.
I’ve also seen cases where the desktop extended beyond the edges of the monitor. Things would end up “over there” off the edge somewhere–impossible to see. Might check that, too.
Another way of sorting this problem might be to:
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download a program called CCleaner from http://www.ccleaner.com/
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run it
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untick all the boxes
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in the windows tab, under ‘advanced’ tick ‘Window Size/Location Cache’
This will restore the default size and location for all windows opened on your system.
What if you right clicked the desktop, go into the monitor settings and change it to the highest resolution? Will that expose more of the screen?
Try your F8 function key. This (on a laptop) toggles between the dual-screen settings. It goes three ways: swaps your primary and secondary screen and puts it into single-screen mode.
It sounds like your system thinks it has an additional screen. My wife has a double-screen permanently for work. I sometimes use it too. And I’ve seen other machines get confused about the function. F8 is the key to sort it. But also, take a good hard look at the desktop properties. You may have extra (hardware dependant) properties which the games are using. On my old laptop, it would sometimes insist on putting the screen into a sort of halfway 600x480 mode, where it displayed the screen at 1024 x 768 resolution, but only showed 600x480 pixels of the screen - so the computer had tunnel vision. Forcing the monitor to adjust its (hardware-dependant) settings cured it. I’ve known non-game applications to do the same thing. I don’t have that laptop now, or I would give more detailed instructions.
This one works! You’re a STAR, Denny 
well, it’s not a high tech approach… 
My humble followup suggestion is to purge your system of anything vaguely related to AOL. Turn disks that pop up in shipment packaging into frisbees.
Perhaps AOL is not the tenacious infestation it once was, perhaps someone else can advise, but they’ve certainly scared me off for life.
2nd…
not that I’ve used it this millenium…
I’d be rid of AOL tomorrow but my wife loves it
What does she like about it? I didn’t know AOL had anything these days that
you couldn’t access in any other browser… I can go to AOL.com in firefox
and it seems like any other portal like my.yahoo.com and its ilk…