How to Change Default Windows Installation Path to Your Desired Path
If your windows OS is installed in C drive, whenever installing new applications, the default suggested installation path is C:\Program Files. If you don’t like to install new applications in the default path for example install in D:\Softwares, instead of changing the path manually each time, you could actually do the simple registry hack to change the default installation path to the one as per desired.
To change the default installation path, just follow below steps:
1. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion.
2. At the right panel, look for ProgramFilesDir.
3. Double click on it to change the value to your desired path. For example, change the value from C:\Program Files to D:\Softwares.
4. Click OK to save the setting.
Once above steps are completed, the default installation path has been changed to your desired path whenever you install any new applications. Hope this simple tips can help you to work more effectively by simplifying the routine process of installation.
Related Articles
- Change My Documents Folder Default Location Path in XP and Vista
- How to Change Windows Explorer Default Folder
- Switch, Change or Set 64-Bit Windows Media Player 11 (WMP11) in Windows Vista x64 as Default
- How to Edit or Change File Type or Extension Associations (Default Programs) in Windows Vista
- Change Windows Vista Start Menu Power Button Default Action
- Change and Set Different Input Method (Letter or Block Recognizer) as Windows Mobile Default After Soft Reset
- Reveal, Copy and Get File Full Path with Copy as Path in Windows Vista
- How to Change the Default Open Folder When Outlook Startup
- How to Change IE Default View Source Editor from Notepad to Other Text Editors
- How to Change Default Web Browser with Single Click
Entries (RSS)
August 7th, 2009 02:56
Can you use a multi-item value in ProgramFilesPath like:
%ProgramFiles%,C:\Program Files
to give programs two places to look for files?
In any case, it seems that one might have to adjust any KEY that had “C:\Program Files” in it to start. Such as the “CommonFilesDir” KEY.
March 25th, 2009 01:22
You should not do this registry-hack after installing windows or after some applications were installed using the original path
Reason: if some programs writes REG_EXPAND_SZ-Values and were installed in the old directory and then read the registry-value they get the new directory. Even if this prog was installed in a different directory!
March 24th, 2009 23:08
This might be helpfull if you could nlite it, but after the fact is not that helpfull.