What is the difference between .inf files and .ini files? They look the same to me. Looks like heading, then settings: [Heading] setting 1=xx settinh 2=xxx setting 3=xxxx Can somebody tell me the difference and maybe a lttle history behind the different files? Thank you

*.ini files are the precursor to the Registry. They hold configuration information for different applications and Windows itself. They still exist on modern systems, but mostly for compatibility to 16-bit apps only. The headings are software-defined - they only mean something to the software that owns them (and in the case of the Windows *.ini files, any apps that need to specify certain information to Windows will utilize the headers as well). *.inf files come with drivers and tell the system where the files that make up the driver should go. They also have headings, as you noticed, but the headings are used to identify different models of the piece of hardware and different versions of the OS. I dunno the history on the naming, but I'm guessing *.ini is "Initialization" or "Init" and *.inf is "Information". Also, I know they've both been around since the days of Windows 3.1 at the very least, probably earlier than that.