Settings in the file wincmd.ini: Overview
Total Commander saves most of its settings in the file wincmd.ini. Many settings can also be changed from dialog boxes. Some settings can only be changed directly, either because they are not meant for most end users, or they are only a workaround to a specific problem. Settings for the FTP client are stored in the file
wcx_ftp.ini.
Note: The location of the ini files can be seen in menu Help - About Total Commander. It can be changed during installation (stored in the registry), or using
command line parameters. A standalone program (inireloc.exe) to change the ini location is available on
www.ghisler.com, Addons section. Finally, if the file wincmd.ini is located in the Total Commander program directory, you can use the key UseIniInProgramDir (see part 2).
Warning: Windows functions do NOT support UTF-8-encoded INI files. Newer notepad versions will sometimes save INI files as UTF-8 without byte order mark (BOM). This will not work and result in scrambled accents. Please save INI files either as ANSI (plain text) or as UTF-16 LE (little endian).
New in 10.50: When starting and there is no wincmd.ini in the configured location, copy file maintemplate.txt from the program directory to wincmd.ini and ftptemplate.txt to wcx_ftp.ini. Note: The installer does create a wincmd.ini. This function is meant for automatic deployments in companies.
Using multiple ini files
There are two options which allow to redirect one or more section from wincmd.ini to other files, e.g. to make the main wincmd.ini read only. It's also possible to quickly delete volatile data like directory and command line history by putting them in a separate file, which can then be deleted regularly.
1. Global option in section [Configuration]:
AlternateUserIni=<somename.ini>
If present in section [Configuration], it will redirect storing of all user-changeable sections to an alternate ini file (in this example, somename.ini), except for the following sections: [Configuration], [Layout], [Packer], [Confirmation], [Extensions], [Associations], [Shortcuts], [ShortcutsWin], [PackerPlugins], [FileSystemPlugins], [ListerPlugins], [ContentPlugins].
2. All sections can be redirected individually:
In each section, an entry
RedirectSection=
can be added to change the default behaviour. It will allow to redirect (or not) this section to another ini file:
Possible values:
0: no redirect even if the section would be redirected by AlternateUserIni
1: redirect to ini file defined via AlternateUserIni=<alternate ini file.ini>
<ininame.ini>: redirect to that specific ini
To deactivate a section (e.g. one of the histories), redirect that section to a read-only file.
Note:
When RedirectSection is placed in the [Configuration] section, all variables of that section will be redirected, except for AlternateUserIni and UseIniInProgramDir, which will always be read from the main ini file.
3. All redirections MUST be in the MAIN (first) .ini file.
Redirections in secondary ini files will be ignored, as well as redirections in wcx_ftp.ini.