Type:Settings Files
Acronym:Windows Initialization File
Configuration file used by Windows programs to initialize program settings; contains sections for settings and preferences (delimited by a string in square brackets) with each section containing one or more name and value parameters. INI files can be edited with a plain text editor, but typically should not be edited or altered by regular users. INI files were partially replaced by the registry database in Windows 95. More recently, they have also been replaced by XML files.