All of a sudden seems that main parenting function is broken... parented object does not snap to it's parent origin... it moves a little but not all the way... WTF? Regardless of the settings in the preferences... "keep position" works as it should, but as it seems no more aligning trough parenting for me?! Did I managed to break it when I turned off "keep position" while playing with "parent blend" constraint? Jesus Christ... I can't believe this is happening now... what a jinx...

Maybe you have some pre-transform stored on the object

Try MMB to see
If so you can open Modify Pre-transform drop-down and chose Reset, if you want to ignore it, or Extract if you want to apply it to the local transform parms

Nope... no pre-transforms... tried it multiple times, fresh scenes, newly created objects, resetting PC... is there a way to somehow "reset" Houdini? I'm really not in the mood for reinstall, or new Windows... seems as flags on objects are getting crazy or a global keeppos has some junk in it (out of somewhere)... I did install xbox screen capture software (something with "xbox" in the name) for an hour our two, but I can't imagine it has anything to do with one of the main functions in Houdini... sounds too crazy or too paranoid...

If you can, post a simple repro hip. It might become clearer then.

Tomorrow maybe... must sleep now...