Change The Default Location For Installing Applications

Posted by Shashank Krishna Monday, August 4, 2008

sharethis: Tired of changing the installation directory each time you install a software.

Nobody wishes to install anything in their C drive or the windows drive as it results in slower performance of the computer.

The default installation directory on windows is C:\Program Files into which new programs are installed. What if you wish to install all the programs into another directory on another drive?

However, you can change the default installation drive and / or directory by using a registry hack.

Start
Run
Type regedit
Go to this directory:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion
Look for the value named ProgramFilesDir. by default,this value will be C:\Program Files.
Edit the value to any valid drive or folder and Windows will use that new location as the default installation directory for new programs.