XP oddity

[#1]

My poor old Dell OptiPlex G110 desktop has always irritated me and I have not found a reason for it. I keep the taskbar up the left hand side of the screen and would like to have the date come up as well as the clock etc., but it is too thin to allow this. I can drag the edge to the right which allows the date to appear, having unlocked the bar and relocking it. Things will stay this way until I shut down when i would expect the settings to be saved. When i reboot later, the bar comes up with the original width and I say short word!  Anything else I may have done to the display, like moving icons, adding new ones, all seem to be remembered properly; so it is a puzzle. I do not remember 95 and 98 suffering from this oddity. Form one answers required!!
C.

[#2]

Is your screen Square or Widescreen?

[#3]

Neither; 13.5 x 10.5 rough inches ie 17 inches diagonal flat screen BENQ.  Display seems unaffected so long as I keep the icons a bit away from the right side. But you might have a point.
C.

[#4]

Been playing with my settings since I read you post, only way I can replicate what you are saying happens is to set the screen type to Analogue, but then everything gets mucked about. Don’t think it’s that is the problem.
I can move the taskbar between screens (Multiple screens), dock it, undock it, widen it. It remains where set after re-boot. All I could suggest is check Dell’s site for latest screen drivers.
Sorry not much help I'm afraid.

[#5]

A long shot but has this anything to do with over/underscanning?

[#6]

Quote from: shutter

Is your screen Square or Widescreen?

Your answer would indicate that it is more wide screen than square..... the reason I asked, was because I had an old DELL inspiron which was square. and side bars caused problems so did not use them....

[#7]

Quote from: colintivy

My poor old Dell OptiPlex G110 desktop has always irritated me and I have not found a reason for it. I keep the taskbar up the left hand side of the screen and would like to have the date come up as well as the clock etc., but it is too thin to allow this. I can drag the edge to the right which allows the date to appear, having unlocked the bar and relocking it. Things will stay this way until I shut down when i would expect the settings to be saved. When i reboot later, the bar comes up with the original width and I say short word!  Anything else I may have done to the display, like moving icons, adding new ones, all seem to be remembered properly; so it is a puzzle. I do not remember 95 and 98 suffering from this oddity. Form one answers required!! C.

Out of interest, is the time on your PC correct?

[#8]

Quote from: colintivy

When i reboot later, the bar comes up with the original width and I say short word!

The fault is indicative of minor corruption in the registry or theme file.  Sadly there is no one way to fix it. 
The most straightforward thing you could try to resolve the issue involves creating a new user account, logging in with the new account and seeing whether the problem is following the machine or the user account.  Beyond that, try creating a new theme file.  If it is still not resolved, you are into trawling through a dozen or so registry settings.

Quote

I do not remember 95 and 98 suffering from this oddity.

XP has more in common with Windows NT4 than Windows 95/98.  NT user profiles were always handled differently and the Taskbar was reworked extensively between Win2K and Win XP.
When it was reworked again for Vista and Win7, I gave up and bought a Mac

[#9]

@Chris Pettitt,
I had a brief spell recently when both my computers did not agree with BST, posted elsewhere, but this seemed to be a glitch in the normal Win time source which is now and before perfect.
@Mav,
Could you spell out the context of over/under scanning please?
@msssltd,
I do not have the problem on My Win 7 laptop and never ventured into Vista nor Win2K. My XP is Professional SP3 if that has any relevance.I will try the new user trick. I inherited the unit from my son who used it as a test set for clever bits of programming and have left myself as user under the name Test with no password as he did.
@Journeys,
That sounds odd, whereabouts is the control of whose settings are able to be Analogue, the driver or the display?
Thanks to all for head-scratching.
C.

[#10]

Further to this thread, I have tried setting the taskbar at the bottom of the screen and adjusted the height, relocked the taskbar and actually amended the icon layout. All looked OK after some other activity. I then reset the system and, lo & behold, everything went back to the left-hand task bar at the old slim bar size and icons where they were! Perhaps this is a function of resetting rather than closing down gracefully. I will try this now when I have time.

[#11]

Further to #9, the problem does not show itself up when shutting down XP properly ie. when the "Saving settings" statement comes up. It looks more like a display problem than a setting saving problem. I can live with a E/W task bar and have set my laptop similarly. Not worth the effort of delving more!
Thanks,
C.