Change location of VS Express 2013 "StartPages" folder
visual-studio, visual-studio-2013
Solution
For Visual Studio Express 2013 for Windows Desktop (WDExpress 12), change the following registry key:
`HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\WDExpress\12.0\VisualStudioLocation`
Mine was originally set to `"%USERPROFILE%\Documents\visual studio 2013"`. I fixed it by deleting "Documents\" and I was able to fix the sloppy lower-casing at the same time!
To the best of my knowledge, there's no way to set this value in the GUI, which I consider to be sloppy as hell, especially for a developer tool! So ignore the negative nancies like these ones who say it can't be done and regedit yourself back to sanity.
Problem
Visual Studio Express 2013 for Windows Desktop puts a bunch of user-specific settings in `C:\Users\MYUSER\Documents\Visual Studio 2013`. I don't like this as it messes with my home directory structure, so I have used the `Tools > Options` dialog to move the majority of these options outside my `Documents` folder. However, I cannot find a way to move the `StartPages` subdirectory, so `C:\Users\MYUSER\Documents\Visual Studio 2013\StartPages` gets re-created every time I start Visual Studio. Annoying! Can someone help me figure out how to tell Visual Studio to use a different folder? This is what I have tried so far: - Look through `Tools > Options`, including the uniquely unhelpful `Environment > Startup` options page. - This post, which relates to VS 2010. - Use regedit to search for the following (in keys/values/data): - `"My Documents\visual studio 2013\StartPages"` - `"Documents\visual studio 2013\StartPages"` - `"StartPages"` - Use Notepad++ to find-in-files for `"StartPages"` in `%APPDATA%\Microsoft\WDExpress\12.0` (no results).