Home » Tips & Tricks: PC

Change The Default Installation Directory

Posted By: Tuesday 5 February 2008 3 Comments

As the size of hard drives increase, more people are using partitions to separate and store groups of files. XP uses the C:\Program Files directory as the default base directory into which new programs are installed. However, you can change the default installation drive and / or directory by using a registry hack.

  1. Start
  2. Run
  3. Type regedit
  4. Go to this directory:

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion

  5. Look for the value named ProgramFilesDir. by default,this value will be C:\Program Files.
  6. Edit the value to any valid drive or folder and XP will use that new location as the default installation directory for new programs.

And that’s it! :wink: I recommend this after when you’ve formated your Windows, this way you have a clean and fresh install and you’re sure that there wouldn’t be any trouble with previously installed applications.

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Behrad

About Behrad:

I'm 29 years "old", married to Jannie and about to be a daddy! We live happily in Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
In 2006 I started BioTecK.net just to show/share my portfolio. After a while I started to blog about my experiences and stuff I do in my life, my interests; computers & computer related stuff, tips & tricks and basically everything which I want to share.
Read more about me, follow me on Twitter @BioTecK or contact me .

3 Comments so far, be the next one! »

  1. nicoleb says:

    Cool – Thanks – I always am working around and around to get stuff to the right spot :D

  2. BioTecK says:

    2 Nicole: I hope that this was a very good help to you! :wink:

    2 Keshav Khera: Thnx for your comment and welcome on my blog! I hope it was a good help to you too!! :wink:

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