Comment by neRok

Thinking more, Microsoft should definitely implement this as a standard feature. They should be able to implement it quite quickly, and then promote it as a win for Windows AND dotnet - and they need some wins!

So there would need to be standard defined, whereby the exe would basically embed a "protobuf" definition in it's header area, and then a maximally sized "message" could be tacked on to the end of the exe. In the Explorer>file-Properties screen, there could be a config tab that shows the current config (and maybe allows direct editing), plus buttons for import/export/clear config. And as part of the standard, options could be defined as public/shared or private, and thus private fields would get encrypted by the OS/TPM, which means sharing an exe with sensitive info embedded would "not be a risk". The config tab could even have a "meta" option for things like "config changes update this executables modified date" (again for the sync/backup aspect).