Question about Program Files organization



How many times have you downloaded a program, installed in the default
location (Program Files on C drive), then forgot about it because you don't
use it much. I accumulate so many programs over time that I thought it
would be great to have them organized properly. Like all antivirus/malware
protection files could be in one place. All video players could be in one
place. Photo editors, PDF readers, not to mention a myriad of utilities -
all organized for easy retrieval later. If one program doesn't work for the
task, you try the others in the list.

Unfortunately Microsoft's (and Apple's OS X) design teams fail to grasp this
concept.
So I tried "refoldering" some software. Most seemed to be fine though there
was an initial delay as it found the new location. Some didn't work at all
(Folder Size, Clamwin and a couple of others) which I removed with
Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel, then reinstalled in their new
organized locations. Folder Size seems to be more stubborn! But almost all
the others seemed to be fine.

Then I thought wouldn't it be nice to have all the programs on a different
partition but then realized that even if it installs OK on a non-C partition
there may still be System 32 files, stuff in Application Data (Hidden in
Documents and Settings) and other locations. I thought Apple was bad at
this but it seems both operating systems scatter stuff all over the place.
So maybe it doesn't matter at all if its on a different partition since many
programs won't work if some of the stuff on C drive is inaccessible.


.



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