I’m puzzled, this does not happen to me.
At this point, I would quit Audacity, create a zip or copy of the %APPDATA%\audacity\ folder, then rename it (to audacity-2026-06-09), then start Audacity, which will create a new folder.
If the behavior now is what you want, I would quit Audacity, rename the current %APPDATA%\audacity\ to audacity-377emptystart, rename audacity-2026-06-09 back to audacity and then compare the two audacity.cfg files in these two folders using Little Differ or similar and try to find the one setting that makes the difference.
Then I would change it in the current audacity.cfg.