When you reinstall windows there's a chance you might forget to copy the files from your desktop to a safe location and if you do a normal install with a partition format, you're screwed! It happened to me lots of times. Fortunately, i don't store anything very important on desktop so i didn't have to shed any tears for that. In my system ia have C, D and some other partitions. C is used for system and program files and D is used for data. All other partitions are encrypted and used for specific data like graphical projects, program sources or photos. If you also have a few partitions then it's a good idea to have your desktop folder in another partition. That way when you screw something up with your C drive and reinstall windows, your desktop folder won't be gone.

To change a desktop folder, go to a windows start menu and press Run.... If you don't see it, try pressing WIN+R (WIN is a key with windows flag). When a little dialog box appears, type regedit and press enter. A registry editor will open with a hierarchical folder structure. You need to navigate to the following path:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders

Once you're done, you'll see an item, called Desktop on the right:


Double-click on it and type the path of a new folder (like D:\Desktop\ ). Next, go to another folder in the registry editor:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

Find the same Desktop item and double-click to change it to the same value you did before.

Restart your system. All the files you save on the desktop from now on will go into the folder you specified. This doesn't make sence if you only have one partition so use this tip only if you have 2 or more partitions.

Article written by: Marius S.
This article is an intellectual property of its respective author. All images, used here are property of tip-kit.com if not stated otherwise.

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