Game settings won't save if I use the INI folder

[stevenmh]

So I've got a bunch of games set up the way I want, and went back to do some housekeeping.  I noticed mame.ini and all game ini files were sitting in the MAME root, and so I moved them to the INI folder and set the directory path to the INI folder.  After doing that I noticed that any changes I make within the games aren't saving.

The INI folder is not read only.  Writeconfig is set to 1 in both mame.ini and game ini files.  What's really nuts is after attempting to make a change, the time stamp of the game ini changes to show that it was modified, it just doesn't actually make the modification.  The only way I can change a game setting with the ini folders in the INI directory is to manually edit the game ini file.

I put mame.ini back in the root directory and set the INI directory path to root and INI.  Fired up a game and made a change.  Good news... the change stuck.  Bad news... it didn't make the change in the original game ini file in the INI directory.  It made a new INI file in the root.

Is anyone else having this problem?  Or does everyone just leave all their ini files dumped in the root?  This is .205.

EDIT:  I think I got it worked out.  I doubled checked the directories and somehow INI was set to root only and not INI.  I set it to INI only, left the mame.ini file in the root, and a game change I made stuck and the game ini was saved in the INI folder.   I guess mame.ini is intended to stay in the root, and for some reason putting it in the INI folder keeps the game INI files from saving?

EDIT 2:  And now, without changing anything related to directories since my last post, I noticed that I have a mame.ini and ui.ini in the INI folder again, and those are the ones being updated.  I've deleted the mame.ini and ui.ini files out of the root since they weren't the ones being updated anymore.  So my configuration is back to where it was before EDIT #1, and yet now the game changes will save just fine.

This is the most haunted software I've used in a very long time.  I'm going to go to bed now, and have nightmares about what will be different when I wake up tomorrow.

Edited February 10, 2019 by stevenmh