I don’t know whether it has happened with you or not, but being veracious, it has happened with me a lot of time. Now you would be wondering about this “it”. This “it” is our very own re-installation of installed programs. You do need to reinstall an installed program when you require changing its location.
Many times this installation and re-installation takes a lot of time and of course effort. Getting rid of this hectic task is not difficult now. Continue with this article to enlighten yourself to change location of programs without even re-installation. Few easy steps involve
• Creating a backup of various files:
Though this process is not difficult, but it does require some changes in window registry. You would need to create backup files of user.da0, system.da0, system.dat, user.dat, system.ini and win.ini program files. Now place these files in a new folder and drag them to a new location. You can choose any desired location.
• Get new program files folder recognized:
From start menu go to Run, and write regedit. Now enter to run this command. From registry editor use Find command and change the path of the program files folder. After editing the location of one file, change rest of file’s location. Yes it would take some time to edit and save new locations to every program file.
In case you are unable to change or edit location of any file, export registry file from Registry option. Simple export this non-editable registry file to a text file and reimport it back to registry.
• Selecting branch option:
Here you would need to select Export registry file from Registry. Select the Selected branch option and choose your desired location to save these files. Now delete all the exported files and locate your newly saved files. Confirm the path in text files and export files to registry.
• Update shortcuts:
Since you have changed the location of program files, so you will need to edit or change the location of shortcuts as well. From start menu, select Target and edit the shortcut tab. Here you can easily change the location and icon of shortcut. When you are done with shortcut settings, click Ok and apply these customized settings.
• Testing the changed location of program files:
Here comes the crucial part of this task--testing. To check the working of changed location, you would need to restart your system. After restarting your system, click on newly edited files or shortcuts and check whether or not they are working. Hopefully all files will work. If they do work, delete all duplicate folders and files. However, if these edited files do not work, simply restore these files back to registry and never try to edit or remove them again.
Author: Tehreem Sadiq
I am masters in mathematics but writing is my passion, that’s why I am here at LearnEveryone to scrutinize new-fangled spheres of writing.
