Why aren't .NET “application settings” stored in the registry?

Question

Some time back in the nineties, Microsoft introduced the Windows Registry. Applications could store settings in different hives. There were hives for application-wide and us

Answer 1

One immediate (but important) advantage:

With plain configuration files, users can restore their settings easily in case of a reinstall / restore from backup. It's a lot harder to do this from registry values.