How to change apps installation location in Windows 8.1?

Hello Mac,

Thank you for your response.

I would suggest you to try following steps and check if it helps.

a. Press Windows + R keys, type regedit in run Window and press Enter.

b. Locate the following registry key location:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Appx

c. In the right pane, find PackageRoot, double-click it and change the default value data to the location where you want.

d. Close Registry Editor and restart the computer to save the effects.

Important Notes:

All previously installed apps are located in the original location and will continue to work without any issues. If you want to change the location of those apps and want to move them to the new location then just uninstall those apps and re-install them from Windows Store.

Serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For added protection, back up the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs. For more information about how to back up and restore the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/322756

I hope this information helps.

Thank you

Hello Mac,

Thank you for your response.

I would suggest you to try following steps and check if it helps.

a. Press Windows + R keys, type regedit in run Window and press Enter.

b. Locate the following registry key location:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Appx

c. In the right pane, find PackageRoot, double-click it and change the default value data to the location where you want.

d. Close Registry Editor and restart the computer to save the effects.

Important Notes:

All previously installed apps are located in the original location and will continue to work without any issues. If you want to change the location of those apps and want to move them to the new location then just uninstall those apps and re-install them from Windows Store.

Serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For added protection, back up the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs. For more information about how to back up and restore the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/322756

I hope this information helps.

Thank you

This doesn't work with windows 8.1, app fail to load.

Hi Shawn,

Thank you for your feedback.

It might be outdated, but nonetheless very useful on occasion. On installing 8.1 it meant that a clean install could be done without affecting my stored files on other drives. It was already partitioned from use with my previous OS and I saw no reason to change it. Though of course, now it is an issue but only due to the fact I'm apparently restricted on where to store apps.

Partitioning that way is sort of an outdated practice, (and actually hurts performance due if you're using a magnetic drive.)

I can't speculate why you can't specify an install location, but I would certainly recommend not partitioning in that manner.  Your apps are already partitioned: by folder.  Your system folder and app folders never intertwine.

I also want to fix this.

For the same reasons as the OP I have a separate hard drive on which I store data. Programs and the OS are located on my C drive, a 250 Gb SSD . My D drive has a 2 TB storage capacity (and I back up to wired external HDD and a NAS drive - one hard disk failure many years ago was a lesson learned!). This seems an entirely reasonable requirement to change the location of all the data the apps use (for example, News alone takes up, I just discovered, 500MB. On my SSD. And I want to locate it somewhere else.

However the storage change suggested above fails as when I try to change the parameter it won't allow me to do so. Could you tell me how I can gain permission to store these apps' data where I wish to?

Good reminder about a) backing up the registry and b) uninstalling the apps first!

Thanks

Andy