Yes it creates a settings.ini, but that is not much use if there is nothing in it ? Version 6.38, w10, do you have to do something else for it to write the settings out, rt does it just not work ?
Thank you
āsettings.iniā ? It should be called āccleaner.iniā.
It is created using this setting and there should be a lot more information in it (my āccleanerāiniā file on this laptop currently has 307 lines and as you can see above is 16 KB in size).
You say that yours is only one line, could you copy/paste that line into your next post so we can see what it is?
I wouldnāt expect one to be there unless you have ticked the option that I screen-shotted above.
I donāt have that āsettings.iniā on this machine.
Iāll have to do some digging/testing to see if I can recreate it.
Iāll fire up my Windows 10 laptop later this afternoon and do some playing with the options/settings in CCleaner Free on that to see if I can get a āsettings.iniā to appear.
Just a though from the ā[NOS]ā that I see there - are your running Norton Online Security / Norton Internet Security by any chance?
Whatever I try I cannot get CCleaner to create a file called āsettings.iniā.
I even went as far as installing the version from Microsoft Store as Iām aware that it creates some extra files.
So another question - If you look at the properties for that settings.ini file then on what date was it created?
(I seem to recall that the installer used to create a temporary file of that name - but that was over 10 years ago).
However this puzzle is a bit by-the-by;
With a bit of searching I have found that Ninite does indeed do an in-place reinstall (that is a new install without uninstalling the old version) when updating software:
Every Ninite installer you download is stamped with its installer ID. When you run an installer it asks our servers for the latest configuration info for its ID. This means Ninite installers always install the latest versions of apps, regardless of when they were created. It also means that Ninite installers need an internet connection to work.
It may even be Nitnite that is creating that āsettings.iniā in the CCleaner folder for itās own use?
Doing a reinstall of CCleaner like that will always reset your settings to default unless you do have a āccleaner,iniā file.
If you want your CCleaner settings to survive in-place reinstalls (and it seems updates from some update tools) then enable that āSave all settings to INI fileā option that I ringed in red above.
Itās also a good idea to make a copy of the āccleaner.iniā file in a different folder as a backup.
That way if you do lose your settings then you can just copy it back into the main CCleaner folder to reset them.
(Thatās what I did after I had finished playing with uninstalls/reinstalls today, I just put my backup ccleaner.ini into the folder and all my own settings were restored).
Hi Nukecad
I suspect you did not see this as I replied directly to your email. I think it is mystery solved, but I still need to know how to export/import on a new laptop install ? This was my earlier responseā¦
Hi Nukecad
You have hit on something a bit weird alright. If I follow the āOpen file locationā from the start menu, it eventually points me to my custom install location D:\Program Files\CCleaner, however, when I checked the C drive equivalent, the ccleaner.ini file is there and has todayās date timestamp. I recall I did a reinstall at the request of the support team, so I wonder if I forgot to change it to D drive.
Anyways, I now have the ini file, so do you just copy this, install on the new laptop, select the check box to create the ini, overwrite this with the old one ? Or is there a way to āproperlyā import all the settings via this file ?
Thanks again
I was editing my previous post as you posted that.
See the bit at the bottom about making a copy of the ccleaner.ini file and just plonking it into the CCleaner folder when needed.
Itās something that I do quite regularly as Iām always changing settings to try and help users here, having a copy of my own settings in a backup ccleaner.ini means I can just copy/paste it in to get my own setting back.
PS. There is no message in my email, but I suspect that you meant you emailed CCleaner.
I donāt work for CCleaner, none of the moderators here do, Iām a user who has been around a while and am trusted to moderate this user forum.
So it picks up the new settings from the ini file ? That is great, I did not know if it was able to read from as well as write to the file 
Yes the settings are saved in the ini, which gets updated each time you change a setting.
CCleaner reads that ini file each time that you open it and uses whatever settings are in there.
So if you have a copy elswhere that doesnāt get updated then you can just plonk it in and CCleaner will use whatever setting are in it.
I actually have a few different ones saved - for Pro and Free CCleaner versions, as well as different ones for different computers.
1 Like
Thanks Nukecad, have set this to Solution.