Comments on: Moving the Visual Studio Folder

By: Chris Carl

Chris Carl — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 04:30:04 +0000

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! I store all of my data on a different internal drive from the OS, and after moving the Visual Studio 2008 folder from My Documents to the new drive, and setting the new folders within the program, VB Studio still kept creating a new folder in My Documents. It was driving me CRAZY!

By: Christoban

Christoban — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 16:56:46 +0000

Good advice, however in visual studio 2008 (maybe 2005 too) you also need to search for CurrentSettings.vssettings.

By: Andy

Andy — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 21:32:55 +0000

This is exactly what I was looking for. I HATE software that does stuff I don’t want. MS stuff is especially infamous for stupid folders that I don’t use. Thanks again.

By: Josh Zerin

Josh Zerin — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 13:57:19 +0000

Thanks for posting this article; I was looking for a similar fix for SQL Server Management Studio.

I ended up doing a values search for “%USERPROFILE%\My Documents”, which yielded results for both VS and SSMS.

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 09:49:41 +0000

Totally agree.

After changing the location, I usually just hide the original folders. Your tip is maybe even better.

SQL Server Management Studio is terrible too. It creates a SQL Server Management Studio folder in My Documents AND a Visual Studio 2005 folder (since it’s based on VS 2005 codebase). Ugh!

Thanks for the tip.

By: Steven

Steven — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 21:30:21 +0000

[quote]“Software should not install icons on the desktop, ask me to give out my email address, run background tasks, install malware, or add folders to My Documents, for example. … Someone should create a software user’s bill of rights to popularize the notion among developers that these behaviors are bad.”[/quote]

This is fantastic writing, and it’s so refreshing to see that someone else GETS IT!

I would equate these kinds of trivialities with requiring a manuscript to have periods and paragraph breaks before it can be published. There’s lots of decent coding standards books, but our industry definitely needs a higher-level list of things software should just do or not do, as a minimum requirement to being published.