It sounds like maybe you have a docked PRV open, but the dock is nearly minimized. Try hitting Shift+D to maximize it.
As for the default behavior when opening the PRV, if the project is new and built from an included project template, the PRV will open docked. If you undock it and close it, the next time you open it, it will open undocked. You can save a template with closed, undocked PRV, and new projects created from that template will open an undocked PRV by default.