Archived and queued Windows Error Reporting

Solution 1:

Yes it is safe to delete these files, they are files generated by Windows Error Reporting when an application error occurs. The per-user data is saved to:

%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\wer

the system data is saved to:

%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\Windows\WER\

THose two folders are split into ReportArchive which is historical reports, and ReportQueue which are reports that have not been sent yet.

This applies to both Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Solution 2:

These files contain debug information which Windows gathers and saves when there are problems with the system or with programs. They are part of the "Windows Error Reporting (WER) and Crash Data" which was introduced with Windows XP and captures product crash data. This way it's possible for end-users to report the information to Microsoft or the manufacturer of the program/driver etc.

If you run out of space on your system disk, you can delete the files using the Disk Cleanup tool.

The full lines are

  • Per user archived Windows Error Reports
  • Per user queued Windows Error Reports
  • System archived Windows Error Reports
  • System queued Windows Error Reports

The directories are

  • %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\WER\ReportArchive
  • %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\WER\ReportQueue
  • %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\Windows\WER\ReportArchive
  • %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\Windows\WER\ReportQueue

Here is a link to Microsoft's Windows Quality Online Services (Winqual) site.


P.S.: There are some known issues which can lead to very large files (several GBs). Read this blog post if you experience the same problem.