[BumontheRun]

As the title says... I'm want to setup Vista to automatically install programs to a separate partition rather than the c drive. I know this was possible on XP but I'm having trouble finding the guide and its probably different now.

I already have the partitions set up. I'm using Vista Ultimate 64bit.

Thanks

[Elvandil]

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion

Change ProgramFilesDir, CommonFilesDir, and ProgramFilesPath.

[BumontheRun]

Thank you very much. Quick question: ProgramsFilesPath is set to '%ProgramFiles%'. Would changing it to the drive be a problem?

I'm changing everything from 'C:\Program Files' to 'F:\'.

Edit: Also do you need to restart for it to work? Doesn't seem to be so far, but I'm gonna try a reboot.

Edit2: Turns out you just have to exit regedit. Well I changed it to the drive and no problems so far. Thanks again.

[Elvandil]

You should leave it as %ProgramFiles% and instead change the environment variable in System Properties (Control Panel > System > Advanced System Settings > Environment Variables button > System Variables). Then any program that uses the variable will access the new path.

[Elvandil]

I guess we crossed one another. Changing it to the new path is fine, but I'd still change the variable so that you don't end up with unexpected things going to your original drive.

A reboot will be needed for the variable change to fully take effect.

[BumontheRun]

Some programs still seem to go to the C drive as default when installing. For the variables under system i created a new one called 'ProgramFiles' with the value 'F:\',but they still go the C. I wasn't sure so I tried using %ProgramFiles% with the same result. In regedit ProgramFilesPath is still %ProgramFiles%, but event changing that some things still default to the c drive...

Is there something else?

Thanks

[Demono]

Some installers might not use the %ProgramFiles% variable and explicitly define "C:\Program Files" as the default location. Bad coding practice in my opinion.