There is a problem with the Backups system when doing a full install.
When doing a full install, the installer simply overwrites the contents of the backups folders, instead of first checking for the existence of the backups folders, and if existing then creating new folders named backups1 , backups2 , ect.

The contents of both of these folders is overwritten:
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\mIRC\backups
and
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\mIRC\scripts\backups

I only learned of this problem today, when I upgraded from v7.55, to v7.61, and then to v7.63
I had downloaded 7.61 a couple of weeks back, but had not had time to install it till today.
Installing v7.61, I learned that it was already superseded by v7.63, so I downloaded that, and installed it.
It was only after launching 7.63 that the problem with the backups folders was apparent. All my settings from 7.55 had been wiped out. I checked for the backups folders, intending to restore my settings from those backups, and found the backups folders only contained the default .INIs for v7.61.

Thanks for your bug report. This is the intended behaviour. The installer will only make one backup and that will be of your current settings. There was a time, in 1996, when the installer created a new backup at every install. This resulted in some users, who ran the installer regularly, having a very large, and ever increasing, number of backup folders. Users complained about the behaviour, so it was changed to the current behaviour. I could change this back again and limit it to a small number of backups, say ten dated backup folders at most. That would resolve the issue for users who perform several installs one after the other and would still prevent a build up of backups. I have added this to my to-do list.

Thanks Khaled.
I've seen that unlimited backups folders behaviour in older programs as well. Chews up space unnecessarily.
But a limited number of backups folders would be good, for any occasion where a user does 2 or more updates in a very short timeframe, because that's what caught me out.

I'm confused by the backups folder. In %programfiles(x86)%\mIRC the dated "backups" folder contains the contents of the installation folder (mirc.exe, readme.txt) and the defaults folder. These do not seem like useful things to back up.

The backup folder %appdata%\mIRC\backups\20201125-232521 contains only the file cacert.pem. The customized $mircdir\mIRC.ini isn't backed up anywhere.

As for the backup options, what is meant by "scripts" anyway? mIRC's own ini files, or user scripts? Because in my scripts directory I do have a bunch of .bak files, but after running the installer the modified dates do not change and they do not match the current .mrc files. When do these .bak files get created?

I have used the new beta installer to install 7.63 2424

Thanks for testing the installer.


These are indeed critical files to back up, in case a user has issues with a newer version of mIRC and wants to revert to their older vesion. This was actually one of the most common requests/complaints long ago - not backing up these files.


Did you perform a full or upgrade install? In an upgrade install, cacert.pem is the only file that is replaced in the user data folder, so it is backed up.

The backup feature only backs up files that are replaced during the install. That is the purpose of the backup feature of the installer.

If you are testing the installer, please be sure to test it with all of the basic options, eg. "full", "upgrade", "portable", etc. These could all have an effect on how the backup works.

I did perform an 'upgrade' install, I thought all files would be backed up during this case but thanks for the explanation.