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A couple of months back, most probably in November last year, I had to install Microsoft Visual Studio on a drive(D) other than C because my C drive did not have enough space to host the software. Two weeks ago I cleaned up my C drive and now I want to move the Visual Studio installation to the C drive because the C drive is located on an SSD drive, and the other drives are on HDD.

vs-ent-2022-installation-location

The Microsoft Official Document reference says that I have to reinstall my Visual Studio. But always there are some exceptional experiences for the users other than the official documentation statements.

ms-doc-ref

One very important cause for my avoiding this reinstallation is, that I live in such a corner of the globe where 30GB will take me like 3 to 4 days to download. Moreover, it will also hamper regular tasks and the custom settings and tweaks I have applied to my development environment.

That's why I am writing this to avail community help if anyone has ever experienced such an issue and solved it anyhow.

Yasir Arafat
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    Maybe you can use symlinks? https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/16226/complete-guide-to-symbolic-links-symlinks-on-windows-or-linux/ – Gantendo Jun 28 '22 at 10:58
  • @Gantendo, Thanks for the suggestion! But this doesn't serve my purpose! My installation is Ok and working fine but legs as being the files on an HDD Drive! That's the only cause I want to move the files onto the C Drive which is on an SSD! – Yasir Arafat Jun 28 '22 at 11:02
  • If you use a Symlink the computer will think the program is installed on drive D:\ when you have actually moved it to drive C:\. – Gantendo Jun 28 '22 at 11:03
  • Great thought! I must give it a try! – Yasir Arafat Jun 28 '22 at 11:05
  • I ___strongly___ recommend not doing any hacks. I tried that once. Updates to Visual Studio lead to it ending up in a state where it could not be used, repaired, uninstalled or installed. I had to reinstall Windows entirely. Don’t use symlinks or whatever. // It is also important to note that most of the required space will be on C:, no matter where you install VS. – Daniel B Mar 20 '23 at 12:24

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While I don't have a solution to avoid reinstalling, I used to have a similar situation, and the one thing I recommend you do for a better experience is to create an offline installer, aka local layout, and use that as needed. It has been so long since I had to do this but you might be able to download in small parts if I remember correctly; running the same command continues from where it last stopped.

HUSMEN
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Something that may be pertinent: after experiencing repeated crashes I started running Windows from SSD instead of HDD. My previous Windows installation remained on the HDD, and I was able to run the VS 2022 copy I'd installed there by running devenv.exe in /IDE folder. The implication is that if you have your paths straight you can indeed run VS 2022 in full from any device-- you just need to make sure you transfer every necessary part. Try copying your Windows folder, Program Data folders, and make a Program Files folder on the SSD and see if that helps. (if you don't want to copy entire Windows folder, try running devenv.exe, note the files it complains about, and copying just those files to folder named Windows and faking the folder hierarchy as needed so VS knows where to find those files.) You may also have to do this for .Net runtimes also.

Anthony Caudill
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    As it’s currently written, your answer is unclear. Please [edit] to add additional details that will help others understand how this addresses the question asked. You can find more information on how to write good answers [in the help center](/help/how-to-answer). – Community Mar 16 '23 at 08:43