How to move Microsoft Help Library (Visual Studio 2010)

On the Help Library Manager page you can read that you can not move the content of the library.

I've found a couple of ways to do this actually.


Hacking windows registry

You can change this setting in the registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Help\v1.0\LocalStore

This is a general direction and may change in next versions of the Microsoft Help Library.

1. Copy your files to new location
2. Change the key value
3. Start the Help Library Manager, go to Settings and check the path is correct
4. Click the Check for updates online link to check your content

First time run... Again

Also you can tell the Help Library Manager to start as first time and then set a new location.

1. Start notepad or your favorite editor with administrator privileges
2. Open the file "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Help Viewer\v1.0\HelpLibManager.exe.config"and change FirstTimeRun key value to True
3. Start the Help Library Manager and set new location

Finally

Open file "HelpLibrary\manifest\queryManifest.N.xml" (mine is queryManifest.4.xml) and correct catalogPath and contentPath values.

Close the Help Library Agent if it's running (look at the tray area).