How to change default install location widows 10?

[rubbertoe]

Hi, I need help changing the main install drive on widows 10. Some apps I download will not ask me to change the location and I have to or else my drive will be filled up completely.

my exact problem is that im trying to download the Bethesda Launcher to play quake champions beta but I can change the launchers install location..

 

[Zerk2012]

You cant do that.
You could do a clean install on anouther drive and it would be the drive it installed to.

 

[rubbertoe]

You cant do that.
You could do a clean install on anouther drive and it would be the drive it installed to.

Well that sucks, I really wanted to play quake :/

 

[USAFRet]

OK...
1. You can't change the default application install location. (mostly)

2. For Steam games, you can. Bethesda, apparently not so much.

3. What size is this SSD? If you say a 120GB, I shall thrash you...

4. There are probably a whole lot of OTHER things that should be on the HDD rather than the SSD.
See this:
Win 8.1 & 10: http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-2024314/windows-redirecting-folders-drives.html

5. And of course, all the administrative things that are probably sucking up your space.
hibernation, pagefile, System Restore points...
Reduce or remove some of that.

 

[rubbertoe]

OK...
1. You can't change the default application install location. (mostly)

2. For Steam games, you can. Bethesda, apparently not so much.

3. What size is this SSD? If you say a 120GB, I shall thrash you...

4. There are probably a whole lot of OTHER things that should be on the HDD rather than the SSD.
See this:
Win 8.1 & 10: http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-2024314/windows-redirecting-folders-drives.html

5. And of course, all the administrative things that are probably sucking up your space.
hibernation, pagefile, System Restore points...
Reduce or remove some of that.

It is 240gb

 

[USAFRet]

It is 240gb

1. How large is this quake beta?

2. Install and run WinDirStat. It may help discover what is sucking up the space on that drive.

 

[James Mason]

Uhhh, actually you "can" change the "default install directory" but that's actually just moving where Program Files is put.

But it's not a good idea to do so as some Windows Updates may not get applied right in the future.

 

[USAFRet]

Uhhh, actually you "can" change the "default install directory" but that's actually just moving where Program Files is put.

But it's not a good idea to do so as some Windows Updates may not get applied right in the future.

And lots of other things will break.
Searching around, you may see a registry change to 'change' this default install location.
Then....the next time you boot up..many, many things will simply fail to work. Including the Registry, so you can't even revery the change...

 

[James Mason]

I know I did do it once in the past on Windows 7, But I also do a regular "scorched earth, start over" and I didn't do it again on newer hardware.

 

[USAFRet]

I know I did do it once in the past on Windows 7, But I also do a regular "scorched earth, start over" and I didn't do it again on newer hardware.

I've seen it a few times in here:

"I found this registry change, blah, blah....now I can get into the Registry again"

'Yes, your system is now hosed. Either recover from the backup you made just before you did this, or wipe and reinstall'.

 

[rubbertoe]

It is 240gb

1. How large is this quake beta?

2. Install and run WinDirStat. It may help discover what is sucking up the space on that drive.

Quake isent the problem... its the launcher. You can download quake on my 1tb hdd, but since the launcher is on my ssd.. it installs all the updates on the ssd.. filling up my ssd.