Win7 x64: i_view32.ini not saved to %AppData% on Windows 2003 Server!

[giori]

Hello,

Users complained having plenty of folders named "server\folders\<user>\AppData\Roaming\IrfanView\i _view32.ini in their home folders, mainly in their "pictures" folder.

I noticed that every time they opened IrfanView 4.27, a new folder\subfolder chain "server\folders\...." was being created. I then realised that the i_view32.ini file is never written to the %APPDATA%\IrfanView folder, nor is the IrfanView folder itself being created. Other apps write to %APPDATA% on the server without problem.

There is a file i_view32.ini in C:\Program files(x86)\Irfanview with the following content:

[Others]
INI_FOLDER=%APPDATA%\IrfanView

Server is a Windows Small Business Server 2003 SP2 with AppData redirected off from Profile folder through Group Policies. Client ist Windows 7 Pro x64 German. APPDATA is set to \\server\folders\<user>\AppData\Roaming, but no IrfanView folder is being saved here. Irfan View was installed manually for all users and Win7 preferred AppData folder.

Is this a bug or did I miss something? Thanks for helping! Never had this problem before with XP and older versions of Irfan View.
giori

[impdf]

I guess the problem is that APPDATA does not start with a drive letter.

At least this is a general issue in Irfanview (i.e. in the thumbnail viewer).

[spongeboy]

I've come across the same problem. I fixed it by commenting out the INI_FOLDER line in C:\Program files(x86)\Irfanview\in i_view32.ini like so:

[Others]
;INI_FOLDER=%APPDATA%\IrfanView


This means that user settings are now per computer, rather than per user. This was ok for our situation.

[Mij]

Spongeboy, in many cases security settings do not allow Irfanview to write to the i_view32.ini file if it is in the C:\Program Files(x86)\Irfanview folder, so changes of settings are never saved.
The purpose of the INI_FOLDER = line is to direct the program to write to an ini file somewhere else on the system where writing to files is permissible. Commenting out the line defeats that. Irfanview may again attempt to save changes to an area where it is not permitted.

The correct solution is to replace the system variable %APPDATA% in the line with a fixed path to a folder where you are sure that write permissions are always enabled for the current user. That could be either on a local drive or on the server depending on the system setup.

Tip: In Win7 you can type %Appdata% in the Search box at the bottom of the Start menu. Press enter and you will open the folder that that variable points to for the Current user. That way you can find out where the i_view32.ini file will be written to by INI_FOLDER=%APPDATA%\...

[kunz]

I can confirm this problem. If %APPDATA% starts with \\, they are ignored. This means the whole directory structure following the two slashes is created in the working directory.

%APPDATA% has no driveletter at the beginning, if you have roaming profiles with folder redirection. Which is quiet commen in larger environments.

This is a definetly a bug.

[MItaly]

An often-used workaround for this scenario is to have the roaming profile mapped on a drive letter.