Vista - Can you make another drive your default drive ?

Have installed Vista but want the pictures/music/docs etc to automatically
be installed on a separate drive. Actually I want all programs to be
automatically installed on this drive. Is this possible ?

Hi will_s,

The data files are easy, simply right click 'Documents' under your
userprofile in Windows Explorer and choose properties. On the location tab
use the 'move' button.

You can change the %apppath% and %programfiles% in the registry, but some
application installers will ignore this. Better to just use the custom
install option during setup to ensure proper placement of the program
folders. By the by, if you for some reason need to cleanly reinstall Vista,
having the existing program directories will not make reinstallation of them
any faster. Also, by placing them on another volume of the same drive, you
may decrease performance if the drive head has to frequently bounce between
volumes to access the program files. In general, I've found it better to use
the system default program directories or move it to another physical drive.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

"will_s" <willsjunkremove@optusnet.com.au> wrote in message
news:189ABB06-06D3-41CE-A743-D03527F9B56C@microsoft.com...
> Have installed Vista but want the pictures/music/docs etc to automatically
> be installed on a separate drive. Actually I want all programs to be
> automatically installed on this drive. Is this possible ?