Routine WinDirStat preferences normally ride alongside your Windows profile metadata. Activate portable mode by shipping an adjacent .ini beside the executable so kiosk or thumb-drive deployments never touch HKCU. Copy/paste-friendly excerpts follow for release notes, enterprise rollout guides, or desktop-support triage scripts.
HKCU-backed UI & scan preferences
Traditional installers serialize interactive choices inside HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\WinDirStat. Triggering “reset preferences” inside WinDirStat may wipe that hive wholesale—exactly what happens when you intentionally purge saved tuning during relaunch workflows.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\WinDirStatNested MFC profile hive
Older MFC plumbing occasionally mirrors auxiliary profile blobs below a secondary key path—mirror what upstream documents when correlating persisted layout state.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\WinDirStat\WinDirStat\Portable WinDirStat.ini override
Whenever WinDirStat.ini sits next to WinDirStat.exe, the binary hydrates configuration from that flat file instead of HKCU—ideal for locked-down labs that block registry writes.
<folder containing WinDirStat.exe>\WinDirStat.iniBorrowing Explorer compression / encryption hues (read-only)
WinDirStat keeps Explorer parity by reading optional REG_BINARY accents such as AltColor or AltEncryptionColor under the interactive user’s Explorer branch; it never mutates those OS-level values.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer
Value names (examples): AltColor, AltEncryptionColor (REG_BINARY, when present)Winget & Scoop automation snippets
Community indexes wrap WinDirStat builds so SOE teams can pin versions—the lines below simply shell out to those installers; nothing on downloadwindirstat.com silently edits your registry.
winget install -e --id WinDirStat.WinDirStat
winget upgrade --id WinDirStat.WinDirStatscoop bucket add extras
scoop install extras/windirstatWinDirStat.exe CLI switches
Automation hooks cover CSV dumps, reloading historical scans, and invoking the retro uninstall sweep—remember to quote any directory that embeds whitespace.
WinDirStat.exe /savetocsv "C:\Reports\scan.csv"
WinDirStat.exe /savedupestocsv "C:\Reports\dupes.csv"
WinDirStat.exe /loadfromcsv "C:\Reports\previous.csv"
WinDirStat.exe /legacyuninstall/legacyuninstall deliberately tears down stale shortcuts, orphaned directories, and uninstall-registry fragments left behind by antique installers—invoke only after reviewing blast radius.
Purging preferences safely
During an in-app reset WinDirStat may emulate reg delete semantics over HKCU\Software\WinDirStat, deleting every child value in one shot; portable bundles might delete the neighboring INI fragment at the same time.
reg delete "HKCU\Software\WinDirStat" /fExecute manual cleanup only while WinDirStat is closed and you genuinely intend to wipe customized layouts or scanner defaults.