Move Delorme Docs location?

[tballard56]

I have a field computer, running Vista, with limited capacity on the main solid state hard drive and need to relocate the Delorme Docs folder to an Express Card that has more capacity. XMap7 installs and hard wires the Delorme Docs folder to the C: drive - I did not see an option during installation to install the Delorme Docs folder anywhere else. I understand from reviewing some threads on the XMap6 forums that the registry can be edited to change the paths and that the default Vista Documents folder location can even be changed, however I run into a problem that I can't seem to figure out. For some unknown reason, the installation of XMap7 puts a Delorme Docs folder in my Documents folder C://Users/GA02/Documents/Delorme Docs (which is fine) but also a Delorme Docs folder in C://Users/Public/Public Documents/Delorme Docs. The contents of the two folders are completely different, which is where I run into problems in relocating these to the Express Card. It makes no sense to me whatsoever that the XMap7 program creates multiple Delorme Docs folders in different locations with different sets of files.

For the record, I have already uninstalled and re-installed to see if I missed anything during the installation on designating where the Delorme Docs location could be specified, but I did not see where there was any option for specifying that location.

Any suggestions would certainly be welcome.

[MikeB]

XMap by default uses the system's shared documents and user documents locations for storing the "Delorme Docs" data. This is not a settable option during installation, much to the regret of several people (myself included).

How comfortable are you editing the registry?

There are 2 keys that affect the location of Delorme Docs for XMap:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\DeLorme\XMAP7\SysPaths\Docs\0.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\DeLorme\XMAP7\SysPaths\SharedDocs\0.


I have modified my setup to point to another volume, much like you intend to do.

[tballard56]

Thanks for the response. I've actually mucked around in the registry to try to get it to reference a drive other than C: but have not had any luck. Everything appears to be correct, but it still is not working so obviously there is some setting I am missing. I think I am going to give up on this for now since I am just spending way too much time on it. I keep hoping Delorme will eventually allow a custom location for the Delorme Docs folders, so far they have been unmoving on this issue.

[jcarpenter]

You should be able to accomplish this with a symbolic link. In this case it will essentially be a shortcut that points to a folder on your storage volume, but (unlike a normal explorer shortcut) still appears to be the original path if you (or an application) use it. I think the mklink command is included with Vista.

Move (or copy, then rename the original) DeLorme Docs to the desired location (which I'll assume is D:\Data\DeLorme Docs)
Then, from an elevated command prompt:

Code: Select all

C:\Users\GA02\Documents> mklink /d "DeLorme Docs" "D:\Data\DeLorme Docs"


This should recreate what looks to be a DeLorme Docs folder in your Documents path (probably with the shortcut arrow on the icon); navigating through it will show you the expected contents of that folder, which now exists on the other volume, but if you check the path in the Explorer window it will still indicate C:\Users\GA02\Documents\DeLorme Docs\. You can test it by making some change to the folder here, then navigating to the target location via the D:\ volume; you will see the change actually occurred here.