W2K Change Default program install location

[Rumble]

I have the OS on a small hd(C)(in preparation for the inevitable crash) and want to put all the programs on a large hd (D) Is there a way to set the variables so that the default program install is D:\program files\*program instead of C:\program files so I don't have to tell it every time
Thanks, John in Miami

 

[Techwhore]

That's a good question and I've often wondered it myself. I'm pretty sure the answer is no... How big is your hard drive? And how many appz do you need to install? Cuz if you can get your OS and important appz on a disk that's 2 GB or less, you can use ghost to make an image.

Not that ghost won't work on drives bigger than that, but it's my understanding that you can't have a file exceed 2 GB in size under windows (which the image would).

 

[Rumble]

Ya The idea is to circumvent the reinstall hassle by doing a ghost on the small drive. The has to be some way to do it - I know you can set the default temp locations in Arcview GIS .
John

 

[LokutusofBorg]

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ProgramFilesDir

That what you're looking for?

 

[LokutusofBorg]

BTW TechWhore, if you're referring to the max file size in FAT32 I believe it's 4GB. NTFS has no such limitation.

 

[obenton]

Thanks, LokutusofBorg.

 

[Techwhore]

<<BTW TechWhore, if you're referring to the max file size in FAT32 I believe it's 4GB. NTFS has no such limitation. >>

I'll have to look into that, if that's true then that changes a lot. Thanks for the heads-up!

 

[HansXP]

LOB is right. There is no limitation using NTFS.

 

[LokutusofBorg]

I learned about the FAT32 file size limitation from our network backups. I set them up so that machines backed up to other machines. The ones that were backing up to a FAT32 partition were aborting the backup 4 gigs into it saying there was no remaining room on the disk. I was like WTH is going on? My coworker told me about the file size limitation. I'd never heard of it before. Changed our backups around a bit. I'm in fact at this very moment putting a separate hard disk in one of our machines for backups to reside on (they've gotten too big for our old tape backup system). It's a 40GB drive and it'll have NTFS so no worries about file size.

 

[Rumble]

Thanks LokutusofBorg Thats the one -It's amazing how much you forget - someone showed me once- the perils of approaching geezerdom
John

 

[Nevo]

Funny you should mention this!

I'm trying to get a KB article published on this very topic.

Here's what I did on my system:

-Boot to safe mode with command prompt.
-Use scopy to copy c:\program files to d:\program files (Scopy is in the reousrce kit)
-Rename c:\program files
-Create a new folder c:\program files
-Use linkd.exe to create a hard link from c:\program files to d:\program files

So, the files reside on the D:\ drive, but appear in the c:\program files namespace.

No need to muck with the registry.

No guarantees on this... but so far no one has been able to tell me why this wouldn't work, and it's been working fine for me so far.