Installing programs. What is the game directory and how to find it? Wrong installation directory selected
<Барми>When installing the program, it writes an error "Invalid folder selected". What to do?
But no matter how many programs the weighty belly of Windows stores in itself, we will still not have enough of them. This means that we will search, buy, download a great many other programs, each of which must also be installed on the system. For beginners, this procedure may seem too complicated, but in fact everything is simple to disgust.
Where do programs come from? From CDs or from the Internet. Which, of course, you buy legally in the right stores (“the right” disk, as you know, differs from the wrong one in price. Less than a thousand rubles is the “right” program only with pirates, where it immediately loses all correctness, starting to whip rum from the throat and wave the Somali passport). It is enough just to insert the disc with the program into the drive: the installation program or an additional menu will start on its own.
The situation is a little more complicated with programs downloaded from the Web. Most often, a program downloaded from the network is a single file: by clicking on it with the mouse, you immediately start the installation procedure. However, it happens that the program comes in the form of a bunch of files packed into a compressed folder or "archive". We have already learned how to work with “archives” in the chapter on Explorer: for us it is a single file, and for Windows it is something like a big matchbox with a bunch of match files inside. It is enough to click it with the mouse to open it as a regular folder. In this "folder" we need to find the installer program among the many files - it is usually called Setup - and we need to run it for installation.
Add/Remove Programs Center
Well, after that, we just have to return to the All Programs menu of the Start button and find the folder and icon of the freshly installed software there. The icons of the most necessary programs, as we remember, can be copied to the Desktop or Taskbar so that they are always at hand.
Most of the programs we need, of course, will have to be installed. However, there are other programs in the world that you can not install at all - just copy to any folder and run. We are talking about the so-called Portable-programs - "standalone" versions of well-known programs designed to be installed on flash drives ... However, no one will forbid us to use them on a regular computer. I personally love Portable software very much: no fuss with installation, these programs do not spoil the system ... Although their existence is not entirely legal: of course, there are official “mobile” modifications of the Opera browser, The Bat email client, RoboForm password storage program ... Over time, special portable assemblies of a number of open source programs were released: the same Mozilla.
But this was not enough for numerous users of flash drives - and since software manufacturers were by no means in a hurry to turn to face them, enthusiasts again took up the matter, creating portable versions of almost all popular programs, up to Microsoft Office and Photoshop. Their task was not easy: after all, commercial programs scatter their libraries and modules in a whole bunch of folders, not counting the entries in the registry. Try copying the installed Photoshop to a flash drive, simply overwriting its folder from Program Files ... Do you think it will work?
Alas, few of the manufacturers appreciated the work of these nameless devotees, because most of the Portable versions are pure pirates. And yet, when it comes to free programs and "software" with open source, try to choose standalone versions.
Legal versions of portable-nporpaMM can be found, among others, on these sites:
http://portableapps.com
Instruction
The easiest way to find the desired directory is through a shortcut. Right-click on the icon, select "Properties" and in the window that opens, go to the "Shortcut" tab. You will see the "Object" and "Working folder" fields, the first pointing directly to the file that launches the game, and the second - to the place where this file is located, i.e. "Working folder" and points to the directory of the game. You can click the "Go to Folder" or "File Location" button to quickly open the address you need.
Most often, games are installed in the Program Files folder located on the system hard drive. Also, check the Games folder that might be created in the root directory.
Use the system search if the game is not in the standard places. Try not to enter the full name of the product in the search bar - a part of it or a short version is better. For example, for "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic" it is better to make a search query: SW or KotOR.
Find the directory in the installer. Run again the file with which you installed the game and see what installation directory it offers you. If there is no such item by default, most likely there is a question: “What type of installation do you want to use?”. In order to see the address, you need to answer "Professional" or "Detailed".
If you need some software to automatically determine the installation directory, you should specify the address of the registry where this information is stored. For example, if you want to write an installer for a patch of The Sims game, then you need to find in the registry the directory that stores information about the game, and in it - the specific value of the game directory. In the future, when creating an installer through a special program, specify a link to the contents of the found address in the "Game directory" field. Subsequently, when the user launches your exe file, it will refer to the address in the registry and immediately indicate the correct location.
To store programs and information on computer media, an ordered hierarchical structure is used - a directory tree. It is built from nested objects - folders. Each folder can contain other folders or files, so to get to any object, be it a document, program or directory, you need to find the right folder. To search for any file system object by its name, the operating system provides special procedures.
You will need
- Windows OS.
Instruction
On a computer running Windows versions 7 and Vista, use the standard file manager - "Explorer" to find the desired folder. To launch it, use the "Computer" item in the main menu or double-click on the icon with the same name on the desktop.
To enter a search query, a special input field has been added to the Explorer interface of these OS versions - it is located at the upper right edge of the program window. In this field you will see the inscription "Search: Computer", but when you click it will disappear. Enter a folder name. The program will start searching and displaying results even before you complete typing.
Wait until the desired folder appears in the list of results, and go to it by double-clicking this line.
It can take a long time to search the entire computer - "Explorer" needs to look through hundreds of thousands of objects. You can significantly reduce this time if you first go to a specific drive containing the desired folder. Even better, get as close to the search zone as possible along the directory tree in the left pane of File Explorer.
You can use the "hot keys" to start the search procedure - press the Win + F combination, and the same file manager will appear on the screen, prompting you to enter a search query. However, in this case, the search will be carried out only in the "Favorites" - it will end quickly and to no avail. Under the message "Items matching the search criteria were not found" you will see the inscription "Repeat search in" and a set of icons. Select "Computer" among them, and "Explorer" will start combing again, returning you to the third step described above.
Related videos
Using Explorer, you can search for folders not only on your computer, but also on others if they are connected via a local network and access to the directory where the desired folder is stored is allowed.
Sources:
- where to find folder found
On local drives or external media with large amounts of memory, it is often difficult to find a particular file or folder. In Windows operating systems, the user is offered several ways to search for folders and files.
Folder search
If you know the name of the folder you are looking for, then open the "Computer" library and left-click once on the "Search: Computer" search bar located in the upper right corner of the Explorer window.
You can also activate the search bar by pressing the Ctrl + F key combination on your keyboard. This will move the text cursor to the search bar, and a list of recently used queries will appear below the bar.
Enter the name of the folder you want to find in the highlighted search bar and press the Enter key on your keyboard or wait for the system to automatically respond to the request.
The explorer preview area will display a list of files and folders that match the search term.
You can also find the desired folder, knowing its name, through the Start menu. To do this, open the menu and place the text cursor on the search bar "Find programs and files" by clicking on it with the left mouse button once.
Then enter a query with the name of the folder you are looking for in the search bar and press the Enter key or wait for the automatic results to appear in the list of files, folders and programs that match the query.
Search optimization
To speed up the search for files and folders on a personal computer, Windows operating systems use the function of indexing files and folders. In non-indexed directories, searching for files and folders can be slow and inefficient. To add any location to the system index, go to the "Start" menu and select the "Control Panel" line on the right.
In the list of the control panel, select the line "Indexing Options" by clicking on it with the left mouse button once. The dialog box that appears displays a list of indexed directories. If the list does not show all the locations on your computer, click the Show All Locations button at the bottom of the window.
Then click the "Edit" button and in the window that opens, in the "Change selected locations" list, check the boxes next to the lines with the names of the directories that you want to add to the index for quick search. Click the OK button and close all indexing options dialog boxes.
Pay special attention to the fact that access to location indexing parameters is allowed only in account computer administrator, i.e. when you try to change them, the operating system may ask for a password.
Beginning computer players often face the problem of not knowing some of the technical terms that are usually used by computer game developers, professional gamers, programmers and other people familiar with information technology firsthand.
Why is knowing certain terms so important?
By setting new game on your computer and passing it up and down, an inexperienced gamer starts to get bored and abandons the game. A few days later, he suddenly learns from his friend that for this very toy there are various free modifications that are freely available on the Internet and are waiting to be downloaded.
The overjoyed gamer runs home with the desire to add something new to the virtual world he has loved so much and immerse himself in it again. He opens the browser, finds these modifications on the network, downloads the archives with them, reads the installation instructions, which says: "Copy files from the archive to the game directory." Copying files from the archive is understandable. What is a game directory? And where is she?
Agree, knowledge of such technical terms can often make life easier for a person. IN modern society, which is based on information technology, such terms are an important component of the modern spoken language.
This article should help all novice players, both those who want to install modifications for their favorite computer entertainment, and all those who do not know the concept of a directory at all. To do this, it will cover as clearly as possible such questions as:
2. How to find it?
3. Where is the game directory?
If you have ever asked one of these questions or are asking them now, then this article is definitely for you. So let's go.
What is this directory?
To understand what a game directory is, you do not need to be. In simple words, this concept can be explained as follows: a directory is a folder on a computer in which files of an installed application are stored. The directory is usually specified by the full address of the application's root folder, for example: "C:\Games\Application Name".
The first letter in the address indicates the name of the hard disk partition on your computer, after the first "\" is the name of the folder located in this hard disk partition (in this case C:\) and so on. Roughly speaking, a directory is a folder where you once installed the game.
During the installation of any application, the installer asks you to select the desired directory, by default it is usually of this type: C:\Program Files\Name of the developer company\Name of the game (program). Most likely, you will have to copy the files of your modification to the folder with this address.
Where to look for it?
In fact, in the answer to the first question about games, lies the answer to the second question considered in this article. But just in case, it is worth repeating so that any inexperienced user does not have the slightest ambiguity.
So, since it so happened that the game directory is nothing but the folder in which the gamer installed the game, then it can only be located on the hard drive or any other storage
How can you find it?
Having figured out what the game directory is, you can start searching for it. It is absolutely easy to do this. If you know the address where your game was installed, then you can simply write it in any window operating system Windows.
You can also navigate through it manually. If you don't know the address, you can use the search engine Windows system, writing there the name of the application you need.
However, in Microsoft there is a function to open the directory of any application in a couple of clicks. Just right-click on the shortcut of the game whose directory you want to open and select the "Object Location" function. You will instantly be taken to the folder with your installed game.
Now you play and what it is. In fact, it is not so difficult, and the information presented in the article will help even the most inexperienced user understand everything.