


In addition, platform-agnostic software may use this file format for configuration. Linux and Unix systems also use a similar file format for system configuration. The initialization-file functions are still available in Windows and developers may still use them. All subsequent versions of Windows have used the Windows Registry for system configuration, but applications built on the. Starting with Windows 95 Microsoft favored the use of the Windows Registry and began to steer developers away from using INI files for configuration. The format was maintained in 16-bit Microsoft Windows platforms up through Windows 3.1x. INI files were also generally used by applications to store individual settings.

This format was used for operating system components, such as device drivers, fonts, startup launchers. The primary mechanism of software configuration in Windows was originally a text file format that comprised text lines with one key–value pair per line, organized into sections.
