Bad location for the settings file

LaurentG

With the portable version of WinFindr, the settings file is stored in %temp%\WinFindr
Moreover, this location cannot be changed.

This is a very bad location, since %temp% is subject to be cleansed at any time.
Moreover, for a "portable" software, the standard policy is to never store anything elsewhere than in executable's folder, or one of its subfolders.

So please modify the soft to have it searching its settings file either in the folder where is stored the portable exe file, or maybe in a "\settings" sub-folder of it

Conversely, it seems (according to the tests I ran on a VM) that the "setup" version stores its settings data in the program foder.... that is also a very bad choice, since it requires to launch the app as admin to be able do modify and save settings.... In this case (setup version), the good choices would have been be either in the registry, or in %appdata%....

jv16

I agree. I will fix this for the next version. Thank you for your feedback!

LaurentG

On the other topic, I saw your answer, and yes, at least with portable version, what you mention works :
If
1) we create the settings file (that is created in %temp%) by saving parameters
2) exit windfindr
3) move the WinFindr.dat file in the folder where the program is run from
then the settings is taken from this file, and following updates are done in this place.

It would be nevertheless better to initially create the file in the right place....

LaurentG

Another solution is to, before first use of the tool, create an empty WinFindr.dat file in the same folder than WinFindr_portable.exe, and it works fine too.

So maybe, for the portabe version, it will be enough to distribute the portable version in a zip file including the two files, the exe and the initial dat file.