Age of Empires 2: AoC expansion

Hey guys, fortunately I haven't had the problem these other guys are having. My problem, however, is that I am not able to see my top menu where all the stats are (eg. wood, food, gold, stone, unit tree, menu items, etc). I tried all 3 resolutions in the game, 800x600, and the other two. I believe I also tried changing the resolution for the comp. My NVIDIA control panel also has a choice of resolutions, those too didn't solve the problem. I even tried most (except the batch file thing) of the solutions in these 4 pages of this thread (eg. rightclicking and leaving open the Screen Resolution window, the ending Explorer task in Task Manager. I'm at my wit's end trying to figure this out.
This computer just got built by a good friend of mine. I am using a 32" Vizio flatscreen as my monitor. Specs:
Win7 Ultimate 64-bit
4GB RAM (Gigabyte EP45T-UD3LR)
Intel Core2 Duo 3GHz
NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT

not sure if you guys need more specs so please don't hesitate to ask. Any advice is greatly appreciated, thanks for your time guys.

Edit: So i downloaded the thing where it minimizes AoC into a smaller window and when I did that I was able to see everything in the screen. However, I am not able to start a game. I can get into the game settings for the map, players, civilization, etc. but when I click start it says "An error has occurred". wtf?

bump

Hey linkjy, thanks for the advice. yes, NVIDIA does have that option but it doesn't let you move it around, just shrink or enlarge, can't really move the screen around. Furthermore, I shrank the screen to all the resolutions I saw and went back to AoC and nothing changes. When the game is at 800x600 I can see it best, which is only the bottom tan line of the top menu lol. The other two resolutions I have to guess (more so) where the menu is. There is no option to zoom in or out with my tv, there's zoom + - buttons, but they do nothing. This really sucks, I figured Windows 7 would run without a problem so I bought this collection of Age games, (my highschool favs) and I do nothing but look at the CDs now.

Is the vizio connected by hdmi?

yes, dvi to hdmi

Maybe it has to do with the way you have it connected, but to be honest I am just guessing. Any other ways you can hook up the tv to your video card? Just to see if it makes a difference.

none that i can think of...dvi port from the pc..i could get a converter from rgb to dvi converted rgb and have rgb to the tv and a rgb/dvi adapter to the pc. but i don't think it'll help.

Probably wont, I was just wondering though. I was just thinking that because my hdmi cable displayed the top on my 42 inch, but maybe its because the tvs display different. Just throwing stuff out to you. Sorry I cant think of anything that's helpful.

This is a problem I get sometimes in XP too.

I guess I should try out your solutions people when I encounter it.