General Knowledge - Technology - Discussion

The INI file format is an informal standard for configuration files of computing platforms and software. INI files are simple text files with a basic structure composed of sections, properties, and values.

.INI files are a format in which OS and system files are stored, that are required to boot up your computer.

The .INI file format is a system file which is mainly used in providing information regarding the system software. Some of the files are boot.ini, win.ini and sys.ini. The other form of .INI file format is .INF which is also used to provide information.

.INI extension contains configuration information for MS-Windows. Two .INI files, WIN.INI and SYSTEM.INI, are required by MS-Windows. In addition, many applications have their own .INI files. In Windows 95 and Windows NT, .INI files have been replaced by the Registry, though many applications still include .INI files for backward compatibility.

The INI file format is a de facto standard for configuration files. INI files are simple text files with a basic structure. They are commonly associated with Microsoft Windows, but are also used on other platforms. The use of the "INI file" has been deprecated in Windows in favor of the registry, and deprecated in .NET in favor of XML .config files. The name "INI file" comes from the filename extension usually used, ".INI", that stands for "initialization". Sometimes files using the INI file format will use a different extension, such as ".CFG", ".conf", or ".TXT"