IntelliJ broken layout after unexpected shutdown

I had been loading IntelliJ IDE when my PC rebooted unexpectedly. After running IntelliJ again the whole IDE layout was broken, there are no tool windows (except IDEtalk), I can't open Project View. I tried restoring layout via Window -> Restore Default Layout but nothing happens.

I tried even reinstalling whole IDE and reimporting the project (creating new project from sources) without any luck.

I can open individual files in editor through "open file by name". But no panel views in the layout are visible or accessible (see pictures).

Has anyone experienced this issue? How could I fix it? Reinstalling didn't help, which is a bit worrying.

IntelliJ version: 12.1.7

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Solution

It seems that something in your configuration is utterly broken.

IntelliJ uses a dot-directory in your home, which could be called .IdeaIC12, .IdeaIC13 or .IntelliJIdea14, depending on your version (in your case, it should be .IdeaIC12 - just paste %HOMEPATH%\.IdeaIC12 into your address bar of Windows Explorer and see if it's there)

If you delete (or, safer, rename) this directory, IntelliJ will think it's a new, fresh installation, so it should work again.

If it doesn't, try uninstalling IntelliJ, deleting this config folder, and reinstalling IntelliJ. After this, I can think of no way it should still behave like this.

If you believe that IntelliJ uses another location for it's config directory, you can take a look at bin/idea.properties - if idea.config.path is uncommented, and set to a different config location, just rename/delete the directory that's configured.