Moving the location of the program folder

saverio · 26 May 2009

Hi all,

I'm soon to be installing RC1, and I was thinking of abandoning my raid array and using the two discs thus:

Disc 1 ( ; system and page file

Disc 2 ; Programmes

I had my other discs organised thus:

Disc 3 ; my user's disc

Disc 4 ; My partner's users disc

Disc 5 ; storage / backup / and music stuff.

My question is this, how does one change the location of the programs folder so that it would read:

D:\programs instead of C:\programs?

Many thanks in advance

Orbital Shark · 27 May 2009

Hi saverio, sorry for the late reply.

You might wan to read Need advice-I think I made C: partition too small! to see if anything helps.

I've not personally tried the registry hack but if you are clean installing then there may be a good many people interested in your results

Hope this helps :)

Jeff

ten · 27 May 2009

You may want to read this first...

Microsoft does not support changing the location of the Program Files folder by modifying the ProgramFilesDir registry value

saverio · 27 May 2009

ten, I agree and those thoughts were in the back of my mind.

I've decided to keep the program folder on the same drive as the system, and move the users to their own individual drives instead.

stevecn70 · 28 May 2009

You can always just create another Program Files Folder on the other Drive and just tell programs to install there instead. it works fine. Only a few things would be put on to C: by default.

Orbital Shark · 28 May 2009

ten said:

You may want to read this first...

Microsoft does not support changing the location of the Program Files folder by modifying the ProgramFilesDir registry value

Intersting read, but they only deny 'Support' of moving the Program Files defaults, it might still be worth a try if you have a fresh, clean install.

Warning

You may need to re-install or re-configure if anything does go wrong.

Barman58 · 28 May 2009

Hello saverio

Another technique that could be used to move system folders to an alternate drive is the use of Junction points, (symbolic or hard links).

This is the technique that Microsoft themselves use for redirecting the old XP folders to their new Vista and now Windows 7 equivalents.

If you are interested in the technique these links may be of use to you ....

How to move the WinSXS folder in Vista. a Single Point of Contact

PendMoves and MoveFile

Windows Sysinternals Documentation, downloads and additional resources

reghakr · 31 May 2009

As everyone has stated it is not a good idea.

what I do is create another partition and on every install, choose customize, and just replace the letter C with a E

You can however, change your "users" folder, but you need to do this immediately after install.

All you have to do is change your environmental variables. Click on Control panel > System, click Advanced System settings and click the advanced tab, click the Environmental settings and change the USERPROFILE path.