There's an undocumented Delphi 8 Project Settings Persistence File. It's known as DefProject.bdsproj. It's located in Documents and Settings\<User Name>\My Documents\Borland Studio Projects.

Normally, this file doesn't exist, and so, you create projects happily, without knowing that the IDE checks for the existence of this file.

DefProject.bdsproj comes into existence as soon as you click the “Default” checkbox in Project Options.

The next time you create a new project, Delphi 8 takes the settings found in DefProject.bdsproj, and applies it to your new project.

Isn't it alright then? Well, IMHO, it is, if the existence of the file is documented. The fact is, it's not. So, I was having problems with a new project until I managed to track down the existence of this file and destroyed it off with a photon torpedo.