How to change the default location for projects?

When you start the Visual Studio 2005 IDE for the first time and open the New Project dialog you will notice that the default location for new projects is a subfolder of your user profile.

Out-of-the-box this location is set to the folder %USERPROFILE%\My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Projects. Changing the default location can be easily done through the Options dialog in the Visual Studio 2005 IDE.

Change the Visual Studio projects location to a folder of choice and click OK. Then when you create a new project you will notice the new default location.

If for some reason you cannot change the default location through the Options dialog try to set the default location directly in the registry (all registry editing disclaimers apply here). Start RegEdit and navigate to the  HKCU\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0\General\ProjectLocationEntries key. And set the value of the LocalProjectLocationEntry1 expandable string value to the folder of your choice.

Unfortunately when you reset your Environment Settings you also reset the default project location and when you create a new project in a different folder than this new folder will be the next default location and your previously specified folder is moved to the second position. This by design but if this is behavior that you would not expect.

The 5 entries in the registry are used to populate the Location combobox in the New Project dialog, you can add more entries or remove entries as you like.