The Case of the Disappearing Clones

Question

Ok, here's a new one for me.
I was cloning a cloud edge, and examining my work. The History palette was blocking my view, so I moved it. Instead, it jumped to the palette bar. Brought it back and tried to move it again. Same thing. Huh? I opened it for the third time, carefully clicked on the top of the History  and this time it moved off the edge of the image. But look! The clones have disappeared from the image, but they are still present in the palette! I ran back and forth up History and nothing. There they are in History, there they aren't on the image. Not a big deal, redo the clones. Looks better than before anyway, but still, where are the first ones?
(Yeah, I know. Dual monitors and all that. But consider if I have dual monitors, this puzzle never would have appeared! Or would they?)
Win7 64, CS5 with all the patches.
Oh, and Happy New Year.

Answer 1

Thanks for getting back Noel.With a name like yours, tis the season!
Last first. Nothing wrong with dual monitors except for my cramped desk space. I probably will change that as soon as any of my potential clients actually materializes. Been quite slow!
So far as screen shots and such, it would have been nice had I anticipated this event, but there it was and I had to write down what I could recall as to the steps leading up to the event. Saving it would lose history so I proceeded rather slowly to try and glean whatever I could.
Now, a variation on this occurred about an hour later. This time I was using the Burn Dodge tool. I flattened the file first, then proceeded to use the tool, and suddenly noticed that nothing happened when a went backwards through history, as if I didn't actually burn anything. The setting for the brush looked ok, and then I noticed that the file is no longer flattened! WTF! I was deliberate in doing so, and even if I went back to before flattening in History, flattened should be visible and available as I drop down through History. According to History, I never flattened it. This could also be the case in the first instance. I thought I had flattened it but it wasn't. I assumed I didn't flatten.
At this point, I have to consider that a prefs reset is adviseable, but before doing that, I really want to see if I can replicate either event. So far, no dice.
I checked the History setup to see if non-linear History was checked and it isn't. But it sure seems like it is.
One unusual condition is that last night, before going out for New Years, I saved my work but left PS running with the file open. So, this morning, I proceeded to do the little detail work on the open file as I intended to run some test prints.
That's when it all started.
Note: as I am writing this, I'm also checking out the app. I just tried to open PS. The icon in the tray showed PS is not running, but I cannot open it. The executable doesn't run. I've seen this before in Win7 and I usually open Task Manager and shut down the program. I see this on any number of programs, like even Fire Fox. But this time I noticed two versions of PS running. I didn't think this was possible. One shows a large memory component 670,000k, the other  about 6,000k. Huh? I shut down the smaller one and get a message that this is an illegal action, but it shuts down anyway.(That notice lasted only seconds and went away.)  I try again, I again see the second version in Processes, the same 6000k memory size. Now it shuts down with no notice. I know I saved the file and did tell PS to exit, so I shut down both instances of PS. Now it opens correctly.
I'm of a mind that there is some corruption going on.The fact that programs won't close when I exit does bother me. ( I'd hate to think about reinstalling the whole shootin' match!)  What I will do is enable the History log. and see if I can capture any information.