emacs 25.1 on Debian shrinks initial frame on startup

[Marc Auslander]

I have the initial frame size set in Xdefaults and also in
initial-frame-alist set in .emacs.

At startup the frame opens with the correct size and default position -
position not set in xdefaults, and then immediately moves to the
(different) position set in initial-frame-alist and shrinks to just a few
rows high - plus the boilerplate of course.

there is no desktop file involved - I've never used that feature.

emacs24 works correctly.

window system is an Xserver running on cygwin providing display to the
linux machine.

any ideas on how to proceed?