FolderRisk: Safe

ReportQueue C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\ReportQueue

Windows Error Reporting queue: incident reports waiting to be sent to Microsoft; it can be emptied with no effect on the system.

Updated on 12 November 2026 By AltF4 Formation

What it’s for

ReportQueue holds Windows Error Reporting (WER) incident reports that have been created but not yet sent: sending is deferred, disabled, subject to consent, or impossible without a network. Processed reports then move to ReportArchive or are deleted, depending on the configuration. See the sibling folders ReportArchive and Temp under WER for processed reports and scratch files.

What it contains

One subfolder per incident, shaped like those in ReportArchive: a Report.wer file, often a .dmp minidump, and extra information files. Behavior depends on Registry values under HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting, such as ForceQueue (force queuing) or MaxQueueCount (maximum number of queued reports).

Risks and best practices

Emptying the queue has no effect on Windows: you only lose the ability to send or reread those reports.
A queue that keeps growing points to blocked sending (network, policy, the WerSvc service) or repeated incidents. Find the cause, with the Application log, before emptying it.
Minidumps may contain application data, so apply your confidentiality rules before any upload.
On a fleet, manage WER through Group Policy rather than machine by machine.

Useful commands

# Number of queued reports, date of the oldest and newest
Get-ChildItem "$env:ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\ReportQueue" -Directory |
    Measure-Object -Property LastWriteTime -Minimum -Maximum

# Read the header of a queued report
Get-Content "$env:ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\ReportQueue\<ReportFolder>\Report.wer" -TotalCount 40

# Empty the queue (as administrator): simulate first with -WhatIf
Get-ChildItem "$env:ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\ReportQueue" | Remove-Item -Recurse -Force -WhatIf

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