c# - Where are the Properties.Settings.Default stored?

Question

I thought I knew this, but today I'm being proven wrong - again.

Running VS2008, .NET 3.5 and C#. I added the User settings to the Properties Settings tab with default values, then read them in using this code:

myTextBox.Text = Properties.Settings.Default.MyStringProperty;

Then, after the user edits the value in the options dialog I save it like this:

Properties.Settings.Default.MyStringProperty = myTextBox.Text;
Properties.Settings.Default.Save();

My question is, where is this new value saved? the MyApp.exe.config file in the executable directory is not updated, it still contains the default values. Plus, as far as I can tell, none of the other files in that directory are updated either! However, when the program reads the value back in, it gets the changed value, so I know it's saved somewhere...

This isn't just academic, I needed to be able to manually edit the value this morning and got myself stumped when I couldn't find anything that was changing.

Answer 1

In order to work with newer versions of Windows' policy of only allowing read access by default to the Program Files folder (unless you prompt for elevation with UAC, but that's another topic...), your application will have a settings folder under %userprofile%appdatalocal or %userprofile%Local SettingsApplication Data depending on which version of Windows you're running, for settings that are user specific. If you store settings for all users, then they'll be in the corresponding folder under C:users or C:Documents and Settings for all user profiles (ex: C:userspublicappdatalocal).