Novice computer players often face the problem of not knowing some of the technical terms that developers usually use. computer games, professional gamers, programmers and other people who are not by hearsay familiar with information technology.

Why is knowing certain terms so important?

By setting new game to your computer and passing it along and across, an inexperienced gamer begins 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 delighted gamer runs home, concealing the desire to add something new to the virtual world so beloved by him and immerse himself in it again. He opens a 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 issues as:

2. How to find it?

3. Where is the game directory?

If you've 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 don't need to be In simple words this concept can be explained as follows: a directory is a folder on a computer where files are stored installed application... The directory is usually indicated by the full address of the application root folder, for example: "C: \ Games \ Application name".

The first letter in the address indicates the name of the section hard disk on your computer, after the first "\" is the name of the folder located in this section of the hard drive (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, the files of your modification will have to be copied to the folder with this address.

Where to find it?

In fact, the answer to the first question about games is the answer to the second question discussed in this article. But just in case, it's worth repeating so that any inexperienced user does not have the slightest ambiguity.

So, since it so happened that the game directory is nothing more than the folder into which the gamer installed the game, then it can only be located on a hard disk or any other storage

How can you find it?

Having figured out what a game directory is, you can start searching for it. This is completely easy to do. If you know the address where your game was installed, then you can simply register it in any window of the Windows operating system.

You can also navigate through it manually. If you don't know the address, you can use search engine Windows, writing there the name of the application you need.

However, from Microsoft there is a function of opening 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 are the game 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 to figure it out.

<Барми>When installing the program, it says the error "The wrong folder is selected." What to do?

Well, it's obvious - to convert the folder to your faith.

But no matter how many programs the weighty belly of Windows contains, they will still not be enough for us. This means that we will search, buy, download a great variety of other programs, each of which must also be installed in the system. For beginners, this procedure may seem too complicated, but in fact, everything is simple to disgust.

Where do the programs come from? From CDs or the Internet. Which you, of course, buy legally in the right stores (the "correct" disc, as you know, differs from the wrong one in price. Less than a thousand rubles, the "correct" program costs only from pirates, where it immediately loses all correctness, starting to whip rum from the throat and waving a Somali passport). It is enough to simply insert the disc with the program into the drive: the installation program or an additional menu will start on its own.

The situation with programs downloaded from the Web is a little more complicated. 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 this is a single file, and for Windows it is something like a large matchbox with a bunch of match files inside. It is enough to click it with the mouse to open it like a regular folder. In this "folder" we need to find among the many files the installation program - usually called Setup - and we need to run it to install.

Add and 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 the icon of the freshly installed software there. The icons of the most required programs as we remember, you can copy it to the Desktop or the Taskbar so that they are always at hand.

For the most part, 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 - "stand-alone" 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 fiddling with installation, these programs do not shit in the system ... Although their existence is not entirely legal: of course, there are also official "mobile" modifications of the Opera browser, The Bat mail client, the RoboForm password storage program ... Over time, special portable assemblies of a number of open source programs came out: the same Mozilla.

But this was not enough for numerous users of flash drives - and since software manufacturers were in no hurry to turn to face them, enthusiasts again took up the task, creating portable versions of almost all popular programs, up to Microsoft Office and Photoshop. Their task was not easy: after all, commercial programs scattered their libraries and modules in a whole heap of folders, not counting the entries in the registry. Try copying the installed Photoshop to a USB flash drive by 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 Portable versions are pure water pirate. And yet, if we are talking about free programs and "software" with open source, try to choose the standalone versions.

Legal versions of portable-nporpaMM can be found, in particular, on these sites:

http://portableapps.com

Instructions

The easiest way to find the directory you want 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 fields "Object" and "Working folder", the first points directly to the file that launches the game, and the second - to the place where this file is located, ie "Working folder" and points to the directory of the game. You can click on 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 can be created in the root directory.

Use the system search if the game is not in standard locations. Try not to enter the full name of the product in the search bar - preferably a part or a short version of it. For example, for " Star Wars: Knights of the Old republic"it is better to use 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 detect 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 for The Sims game, then you need to find the directory in the registry that stores information about the game, and in it - the specific value of the game directory. In the future, creating the installer through a special program, indicate the link to the contents of the found address in the "Game Directory" field. Subsequently, when the user launches your exe-file, he 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 folder you need. To search for any file system object by its name, the operating system provides special procedures.

You will need

• Windows OS.

Instructions

On a computer running Windows versions 7 and Vista, use the standard file manager, File Explorer, to locate 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 the mouse it will disappear. Enter a name for the folder. The program will start searching and displaying results even before you complete the set.

Wait until the required folder appears in the list of results, and go to it by double-clicking this line.

Searching an entire computer can take a long time — Explorer has to scan hundreds of thousands of items. You can significantly reduce this time if you first go to a specific drive containing the desired folder. Better yet, get to the search area as close as possible to the directory tree in the left pane of Explorer.

You can use "hot keys" to start the search procedure - press the combination Win + F, and the same file manager will appear on the screen with a proposal to enter a search query. However, in this case, the search will be carried out only in the "Chosen" - it will end quickly and to no avail. Under the message “No objects matching the search criteria were found” you will see the words “Repeat search in” and a set of icons. Select "Computer" among them, and "Explorer" will start combing again, returning you to the above third step.

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Helpful advice

Using Explorer, you can search for folders not only on your computer, but also on other folders if they are connected via a local network and access to the directory where the required folder is stored is allowed.

Sources:

• where to find folder found

On local drives or external media with a lot of memory, it is often difficult to find a specific 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, open the "Computer" library and left-click once on the search line "Search: Computer" located in the upper right corner of the explorer window.

You can also activate the search bar by pressing the Ctrl + F keyboard shortcut. This will move the text cursor to the search bar, and a list of recently used queries will appear below the line.

Enter the name of the folder you want to find in the highlighted search bar and press the Enter key on the keyboard or wait for the system to automatically answer the request.

The browser's browsing area displays 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 line "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 display of results, in the list of which the files, folders and programs corresponding to the query will be displayed.

Search optimization

To speed up the search for files and folders on a personal computer, Windows operating systems use the file and folder indexing feature. 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. In the dialog box that appears, a list of indexed directories is displayed. 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 "Change" 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 need to be added to the index for quick search. Click OK and close all the Indexing Options dialog boxes.

Pay Special attention that the location indexing options are only accessible in account computer administrator, i.e. when trying to change them operating system may ask for a password.