This is the opposite of a typical full-screen issue, I suppose. I get full-screen when I don't want it.
When I open up a VLC file, usually the file plays at full-screen, so I sometimes get very blurry videos. If I click the resize button in the upper right-hand corner, often the video disappears entirely. Furthermore, the zoom function insists that VLC is playing at 1.00x, no matter the size.
This doesn't happen with every file. While VLC always starts at full-screen, sometimes tapping the resize button gives the proper size. It isn't always consistent. I watch a lot of FLV files, and some of them suffer this problem all the time, some suffer some of the time, and some none of the time.
I'm using Windows XP, and have an advanced video card to play video games - ATI Radeon HD 5600 with the newest driver.