Change location of config files, Windows 7?

By default some programs save their configuration to the USERPROFILE folder. Typically this is

C:\Users\Steven

I would like to change where these programs are saving these files, possibly

C:\Users\Steven\Configs

How would I go about doing this?

Steven Penny

Posted 2012-03-15T00:33:41.063

Reputation: 7 294

Answers

This is a workaround. Create a new user folder.

C:\home\Steven

Create a Configs folder

C:\home\Steven\Configs

Symlink to any config files that you want to keep

mklink foo.bar C:\home\Steven\Configs\foo.bar

Steven Penny

Posted 2012-03-15T00:33:41.063

Reputation: 7 294

The apps are (most likely) writing to the folder by referencing the %USERPROFILE% variable. The user's profile folder is one of the few places they are allowed to write without system/admin intervention. It's where they're 'supposed' to write to.

Unless you change the location of your user profile (hint: check HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList), or the programs themselves, I don't think you're going to be able to accomplish what you seem to want to do.

Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007

Posted 2012-03-15T00:33:41.063

Reputation: 103 763

You're right, the linked question is not really that great to do what you want, so I've changed it to something a little more appropriate. The answer itself still stands, they are writing to the USERPROFILE folder, you either need to change the profile folder/location, or change the programs so they write where you want. – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 – 2012-03-15T04:24:00.777

Again, you havent thought your answer through. What exactly would I change my ProfilesDirectory to in the registry? Even if I changed it to C:\Users\Steven\Configs, the programs would write to C:\Users\Steven\Configs\Steven, not to mention this would break any other user profiles that exist. – Steven Penny – 2012-03-15T14:34:13.210

They are probably (this is my expertise speaking here, which sarcastically means how I would try to do this) located in your environment / path variables. Go to start, type environment variables, and it should take you to the PATH and TEMP variables, where you can change the location. NOTE!: This may make some programs stop working, so be careful, and I warned you if they do stop.

cutrightjm

Posted 2012-03-15T00:33:41.063

Reputation: 3 966