@gurikbal-singh RESOLVED: I tried to find out if any of the plug-ins all of sudden started to tamper with anything so I removed them (almost) all from the folder – and yes, after NPP restart, I saw the console and JSLint working. So I started to add all of the plug-ins back by one or two at a time and found out that actually none of the plugins I use tamper with anything and what I had is some obscure glitch that probably had something to do with window position of certain plugins or something like that.
If this glitch had to do with some weird window positions (not sure, but it is likely), then can we ask the developer(s) to add something alike to “Cascade windows” function from the good old days? Not literally that, of course, as we are dealing not with tabs/windows for files open, but with auxiliary windows/consoles that can just go away to somewhere.
Thanks for you help.