I take it when you open your internet windows there small or only half the size of your screen?
As far as my knowledge goes, you cannot set them to Maximized by default, however to set the size to big to just need to make every 'small' window that appears big. Gradually over time the computer will response to this and start openin your windows in a big size.
when you open a new window and it is small just use your mouse to drag it to full size. now hold the control key and close the window. open again and should be full size from now on.
What holeinone is saying is that you may have *shrunk* your Internet Explorer window manually and then closed out. Once you closed out Internet Explorer kept your most recent size in it's head and repsonds by openning it to that size you had every time. So open Internet Explorer then drag the bottom right corner to the right and down until you are satisfied with the size of the window. Now close out and see if it's your new size you made. If it's not, then simply try it a few mores times.
I love it when one person responses to somebody else to help them out, and later loads of other people response saying basicly the same as the first guy did.
...NOT!
Don't people read the other posts in a topic before bothering to reply!?