File is saved, but it isn't saved

Paul Huggins

Hi folks,
I frequently have to edit INI files to enable logging in some programs. These .ini files are plain text, but there’s a weird problem.

I open an .ini file in Notepad++ and change the text “logging OFF” to “logging ON”.
I save it.
I re-open the file in Notepad++ to make sure the change was saved. The file does say “logging ON”, so it LOOKS like the edited file was saved.
However, the software behavior doesn’t change, and if I open the same .ini with Notepad (the Windows one), it shows that the .ini file still says “logging OFF”.

So apparently when I save a file with Notepad++, it saves a cached copy of it in a different location, then when I try to open that file again, Notepad++ instead opens the cached file.

Has anyone else experienced this? Is there a setting to turn this off?

PeterJones

@Paul-Huggins ,

Nope. That is not happening at all.

If you have saved the file, then close and re-open the file in Notepad++, and you see your changes, then the file has been written to disk in the path it claims it was saved to.

I can think of two things that might be happening:

You might be editing an INI file that lives within %Windir%\System or one of its equivalents, in which case you have likely hit the Windows OS’ File System Redirector
After you save and write the file from Notepad++, maybe the original application was still open and re-wrote the INI file back to the way it thought it should be.