Windows woes

[Sean Kelly]

Deewiant wrote:
> 
> I've renamed Program Files, and it's actually rarer than I would have thought
> that programs want to install to C:\Program Files. Of course, this requires that
> you change some registry keys to point to your directory instead of the default.
> 
> The one "big" case I remember was that the ATI Catalyst video drivers wanted to
> put something there - I can't remember what it was - and they also tended to pop
> up with errors when I tried to force them into my D:\Programs directory. This
> was reason enough for me to switch to the third-party Omega drivers, which have
> worked fine.
> 
> Other than that, only one or two programs have wanted, by default, to install to
> C:\Program Files, but it's hardly troublesome to just manually tell the
> installation program where you want it.
> 
> Using a different path for My Documents is far more painless. Even Microsoft's
> own Tweak UI (for Windows XP) lets you change that:
> http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx
> 
> The only trouble is that you still end up with "My xxx" in your My Documents
> folder, regardless of what you name the latter. Nothing's forcing you to use
> those directories for anything, though.

I did this quite a while back (in windows 2000 IIRC) so things have 
likely improved since then.  At the time, I was trying to replicate a 
Unix type layout in Windows, so "Documents and Settings" was renamed to 
"home" and "program files" was renamed to "bin."  It *almost* worked, 
but enough things broke to make it inconvenient.  I'd be willing to give 
it another shot, but not until I have reason to reinstall Windows :-)


Sean