Upgrade Issue - Windows Version

[Mark Doliner]

On Sun, Jul 13, 2014 at 6:19 AM, Stu Parker <sparker2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is this normal behavior?

If you obtained both the old and new version from our official sources
(e.g. by following a link from https://pidgin.im/) then no, that's not
normal behavior. Pidgin always retains settings when upgrading. It's
possible that if either the old or new version came from elsewhere
(e.g. a "portable" install), then the settings could be stored
elsewhere and would be adrift upon upgrade.

The official Pidgin builds look for settings in a .purple directory in
a standard location:
https://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/Using%20Pidgin#Whereismy.purpledirectory

Contacts are also cached in this same location... but note that most
of the major IM  services store your contact list server-side, so
Pidgin's local copy tends to be used to augment the official list with
additional info (aliases, merged contacts, last-seen timestamps, etc).