:q does not close buffers

I've been using Vim for a long time but mostly in a terminal under Linux.
Work laptop is a Windows 7 machine and I've installed GVim 7.4. I made a
number of changes following various web posts on how to get GVim to open files
in a new tab vice a new instance of Vim. Likely due to one of those changes,
:q and :q! no longer close the file. It closes the window/tab and leaves the
buffer open but hidden. Took me a bit to figure out what was going on. Every
time I'd open a file with the "Open file in existing Vim..." option from a
right-click, it seemed like every file I'd edited was being reopened. I finally
figured out that all of the files were already open, just in a hidden buffer and
Vim was merely opening a new tab for those hidden buffers. That's because I
have :ball configured in my rc file but removing that didn't cause Vim to
actually close the files. I'm reasonably sure Vim did not behave like this
previously, since the way I actually figured out what was going on was that I
was unable to delete a file I'd previously edited because Vim still had it open
even though I'd quit the file. I'd like to have :q actually close the file and
the buffer but after a couple of days of Googling I haven't been able to figure
out which configuration setting I farkled. I've pored through the rc files and
am not seeing anything there either. I thought it was the :set hidden option
but that doesn't exist in my rc files and after manually turning it off in a
running instance, that instance still left the buffer open when I quit a file
via :q!. Any hints or suggestions greatly appreciated.

--
"Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the
things we did not do that is inconsolable." - Sydney J. Harris

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