Changing the File Installation Location

by Jim Pile

January 11, 2002 —

Reader Tomas G. asks this Windows 2000 question, which also applies to
Windows XP Professional.

"I use Windows 2000 Professional. My Drive C is running out of
space so I recently installed a new Drive D that I use for data
storage. Is there a way to automatically install the new programs
that always go into c:\Program Files on the new drive?"

You need to change the install location in the Registry. I wrote a REG
file to do this some time ago when I had the same problem.

To create the REG file, run Notepad and enter the following as shown
here. Where you see PRESS ENTER HERE, press Enter to create blank lines.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
PRESS ENTER HERE
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion]
"ProgramFilesDir"="d:\\Program Files"
PRESS ENTER HERE

Choose File, Save As, and name the file NewLoc.reg. Locate a folder for
your new file and click Save. Now, change the line:

"ProgramFilesDir"="d:\\Program Files"

to:

"ProgramFilesDir"="c:\\Program Files"

and choose File, Save As. Name this file OldLoc.reg, locate a folder,
and click Save. Close Notepad and double-click NewLoc to change your
installation default. To restore the setting to Drive C, which you may
want to do later, double-click OldLoc.

Note: I have seen some programs that insist on installing in c:\Program
Files. Such programs apparently embed that location into the
installation code. Unless they offer you a way to change folders,
there's not much you can do about them.

ITworld