delphi IDE appearing off-screen

Question

When starting the Delphi IDE, nothing is visible because everything is appearing off-screen. I tried looking for a command line option to run the IDE in full-screen, but there is no such option documented. I would like to fix without re-installing Delphi.

Answer 1

Check the desktop configuration files

Normally, there are several .dst files that are used to save and restore the Delphi desktop configurations.

e.g., Startup Layout.dst, Default Layout.dst, Debug Layout.dst

These are faily obvious text files that you can edit, but you may have useful backup files with the extension .~dst that will fix your problem by simply copying them over the corresponding .dst files. If your backups are no good, you can also just rename or delete the .dst files.

The folder location is dependent upon how you installed Delphi, but typically you will find them in:

C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Roaming\Embarcadero\BDS\{delphi-version}

Older versions of Delphi will have a different default location (Windows did not always have roaming profiles). I did not try to look up default locations for old versions, since I did not have any of them older than version 22 (XE 8) currently installed.

Answer 2

I have the same issue when disconnecting my second screen and then starting Delphi again. It helps to know the windows hotkeys in this case. You can move the Delphi window onto your desktop pressing Alt+Space | Move. Then use your arrow keys to move the Delphi back onto your desktop.