Hands on: Investigating Windows XP .ini files

Back in Windows 3.x days, practically all Windows’ settings were stored in .ini files. These plain text files covered everything from hardware (System.ini) to installed fonts and desktop settings (Win.ini).

All this data (joined by much more) migrated to the Windows Registry in Windows 95, but if you search for .ini files on your computer, making sure you have the search hidden, system and sub-folders options enabled, you’ll probably still find hundreds.

The files that never die
In Windows 2000 and XP, you will have a Boot.ini in the root of the boot drive (usually C:\). This controls the boot menu options (if any) you get when Windows loads.

Many more .ini files will be for applications – the name or location should make these fairly obvious, and we’ll ignore them.

Then you’ll have a load of Annnnnnn.ini files in subfolders of the System Volume Information\_restore… folder. These are System Restore backups, and we’ll pass over these as well.

You’ll find, in the Windows folder, the fossils of Windows 3.x – Win.ini, System.ini and Control.ini.

These are provided for backward compatibility with 16bit applications – they are not used on a regular basis, but if an old application writes to them, the changes will be spotted and the relevant settings added to the Registry.

You’ll find more .ini files in the Windows\Driver Cache .cab files with copies in the Driver.cab files if you have the XP installation files copied to your hard drive. Again, these are not in regular use (they’re mainly for installing printer drivers), and we’ll ignore them for now.

Each user will have in their profile (for example, C:\Documents and Settings\Your Name) an Ntuser.ini file, and there may be files of this name in the LocalService and NetworkService profile folders.

We can deal with these quickly as they specify what settings and data – such as Temporary Internet Files and IE History – are not included in roaming profiles.

Keys to the desktop
This should leave us with a lot of Desktop.ini files. These are the key to giving folders special status or customising them.

Some system folders, such as the Fonts and History folders, derive their special powers from a CLSID or UICLSID entry in the Desktop.ini that identifies them through the Registry.

These should be left strictly alone, but Desktop.ini files can apply to user-created folders as well.

Desktop.ini files are usually flagged as hidden system files. So make sure you have ‘Show hidden files and folders’ enabled but ‘Hide extensions for known file types’ and ‘Hide protected operating system files’ disabled in Folder Options, View.

All .ini files consist of sections headed by text in square brackets, and Desktop.ini files can have several sections.

The [LocalizedFileNames] heading is present in many of the Start Menu folders, the Quick Launch toolbar folders and the Send To folders in the various user profiles.

We haven’t been able to find documentation on this, but these appear to contain supplementary information on shortcuts, such as the one to Activate Windows.

The [ExtShellFolderViews] section is of little relevance to XP, although, if you’ve upgraded your system from Windows 98, ME or 2000, you may find some Desktop.ini files still have it.

It will always be found with one or two other sections whose names consist of a GUID such as [{8BEBB290-52D0-11d0-B7F4-00C04FD706EC}]. These are used to specify a Web View template.

In earlier versions of Windows, the templates (.htt files) could be used to customise folders but in XP things have been simplified.

You’ll still get a choice of templates in the ‘Customize folder’ dialogue, such as Documents, Pictures, Photo Albums, Videos and so on, and these will control what appears as ‘Folder Tasks’ in the left-hand pane.

These also affect the view options – if you choose Photo Album or Pictures, for instance, you’ll get the ‘Film Strip’ view option, where you can see a strip of thumbnails along the bottom of the folder with an enlarged view of the selected image above. This choice is stored in the Registry, not in the Desktop.ini file.

Having said that, you can still use those sections to assign a background image to a folder and change the icon label font colour, as follows:

[ExtShellFolderViews]
{BE098140-A513-11D0-A3A4-00C04FD706EC}={BE098140-A513-11D0-A3A4-00C04FD706EC}
[{BE098140-A513-11D0-A3A4-00C04FD706EC}]
Attributes=1
IconArea_Image=imagefile
IconArea_text=0x00FFFFFF

Replace imagefile with the path to the image you want to use and change the last six characters of the last line to give the blue, green and red components of the colour in hex.

Our example maximises all three to give white, but 0x0FF0000 would give pure blue, for example.