Saving persistant data within Web/Email Executable

Hello,

Forgive me if this has been answered. I searched with as many keywords as I could, but did not find a suitable topic.

I want to deploy a single executable that I can save user prefs at runtime. I know I can do this with a simple INI file in the Windows directory. Or I could use a database, of course. I've done both of these in the past.

But this time, I want to keep the program "portable" enough that it can live on a thumbdrive (or similar) and not require any files outside the project's exe.

I just created a test project that writes to an INI in the project's docs folder. But once I compile the project, the new entries don't stay saved in the INI after a re-launch (everything is back to the way it was when it was compiled).

Thanks for any ideas and insight!
-Stobe