What is %windir%?

What does %windir% stands for?

I am receiving a malware analysis report with things like windir%\system32\catroot, %windir%\folder1\folder2 and I want to know what does it mean?

Solution 1:

The Windows directory or SYSROOT. This corresponds to the %WINDIR% or %SYSTEMROOT% environment variables. A typical path is C:\Windows.

This variable points to the Windows directory (on Windows NT-based operating systems it is identical to the %SystemRoot% variable. If the system is on drive C:, then the default values are "C:\WINDOWS" on Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7.

For more info see Wikipedia's Environment Variables entry.

Solution 2:

Open a command prompt by clicking Start, typing cmd, then Enter. Type echo %windir%, then Enter, and the path should print to the screen. Usually C:\WINDOWS