By default, all font, communications drivers, wallpaper, screen saver, and language settings were stored in WIN.INI by Windows 3.x.
Windows XP still acknowledged some entries in the WIN.INI file to provide backwards compatibility with older 16-bit applications.
[1] Prior to Windows 3.0, it was not uncommon for applications to store their configuration settings inside WIN.INI (via GetProfileString).
Microsoft bundles two specialized editors for core configuration files (such as WIN.INI, SYSTEM.INI, CONFIG.SYS, and AUTOEXEC.BAT) with its operating systems.
MSConfig, included with Windows 98 and above except Windows 2000,[3] is a simpler application that allows a user to enable and disable drivers and applications from being loaded at startup by the aforementioned files and the Run, RunEx, and RunOnce registry keys.