Window on task bar won't display

Hello,
The following problem periodically and unpredictably occurs on my Win7 tower and my XP laptop; so, I think it's operator error or something with setup. Help appreciated ---

For a desktop icon, I have the properties set to open the program in a "normal window." When I click the shortcut to start the program, it appears on the task bar, but won't display on the screen at all; left clicking the task bar button just changes the button, but no display. Right clicking the task bar button and selecting "full size" will display the program window in the full screen. Clicking on the window button in the upper right corner collapses the window all together. So, full screen or nothing. Then, the next time through with an offending program, it works normally. That's the problem. What am I doing...?
...robert

 

Sounds like poorly written software to me, or software written for earlier versions of Windows. Might help if you told us what the program is and its version number, but you could try running it in compatibility mode for earlier versions.