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Guide: Installation of Oculus Software to Non-System Drives

cybereality
Grand Champion

NOTE: This guide is NOT NEEDED anymore as the setup installer supports multiple drives natively.


WARNING: Some users are experiencing issues with the steps below. You may wish to hold off performing these steps for the time being while we investigate. Thanks.

The team's releasing an update that enables installation of Oculus software and apps to drives other than your system drive (typically, C:\Program Files (x86)\Oculus) in one of the first Rift updates (likely the next 2-3 weeks). In the meantime, there is an unofficial workaround you can use to move your existing Oculus software and all installed games to a different drive.

Note that this is unsupported (!) and doesn't have a migration path back to a good state once we release the update in the next few weeks. Also, note that the full OculusSetup.exe functionality (uninstall, repair) won't work if you're using this workaround.

Your destination drive will need the following to be true:

  • NTFS file system
  • Not a network drive
  • Not a removable drive (like a portable external HD)
  • Its drive letter (such as E:\) won't change for any other reason
  • 1.2GB free space (in addition to the size of your installed games)


Process:

  1. Install Oculus using OculusSetup.exe ( www.oculus.com/setup - available Monday morning PST)
  2. Launch a command prompt with admin privileges:
    1. Win 7: Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> right-click Command Prompt, choose Run as administrator
    2. Win 8 or Win 10: Right-click Start or hit Win+X, choose Command Prompt (Admin)
  3. Shutdown the Oculus VR Runtime Service:
    1. Run in the command prompt: net stop OVRService
  4. Move your Oculus folder to another drive while maintaining permissions (as an example, E:\Oculus). You must move the folder using xcopy, or you will break Oculus and risk opening security holes in your system.
    1. Run in the command prompt: xcopy “C:\Program Files (x86)\Oculus” E:\Oculus\ /O /X /E /H /K
  5. Delete the “C:\Program Files (x86)\Oculus” directory
  6. Symlink your new directory with the old directory location:
    1. Run in the command prompt: mklink /d "C:\Program Files (x86)\Oculus" E:\Oculus
  7. Restart the Oculus VR Runtime Service:
    1. Run in the command prompt: net start OVRService
AMD Ryzen 7 1800X | MSI X370 Titanium | G.Skill 16GB DDR4 3200 | EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 | Corsair Hydro H110i Gigabyte RX Vega 64 x2 | Samsung 960 Evo M.2 500GB | Seagate FireCuda SSHD 2TB | Phanteks ENTHOO EVOLV
113 REPLIES 113

enry
Honored Guest
Hi guys, same flickering open/close borders issue on Win 8.1 clean installation so probably not writing anything new here but can you please confirm me if I got it right or misunderstood something?
By my understanding the Oculus Setup will install by default into C:\ProgramFiles(x86)\Oculus (assuming the first free-space-check find enough space) and after the installation is completed, when it should start Oculus Home, it makes another space-check that if goes wrong (flickering borders window-I have 9Gb free on my C) stop the runtime and the service "ovrlibrary" result stopped and impossible to start even manually.
So one solution should be? to leave the original installation into C and then softlynk the "Download" and "Software" folders to another drive with more free space...otherwise messing with xcopy also could result as a workaround for some...?
sorry if I'm asking confirm on this but I've been an early adopter since the DK1 and now I'm feeling...locked out of the VR world...until a fix come...any further suggestion is highly appreciated.

enry
Honored Guest
Steam VR recognize Rift DK2 and Tracker but I can only see the mirroring going on on hte pc screen and even the Oculus tracker works but I have no Images in the Rift (orange light is on while the IR tracker has the blue light on)

koolwaad
Honored Guest
was about to try Lucky's tale ... and not enough space .... i 've read this thread and just forgot to play ... and so won't buy any app tho .......  fix that ... Thank you

loader
Honored Guest
If anyone gets "Invalid Number of Parameters" but they have the Program Files folder in quotes. Make sure you DON'T have your destination folder in quotes unless it also has a space. After googling the issue and everyone saying make sure you quote locations with spaces no one actually said "and also don't quote locations that don't have spaces".

SubElement
Explorer
I also have the flashing window issue. Windows 10 x64.

Can we just get official directory choice support instead of this work around?

sayanbha
Explorer
Hopefully @cybereality can give us updated instructions. Or new oculus installer supporting other drives.

RikkTheGaijin
Heroic Explorer
I can't understand why the hell they didn't think this since the beginning, it looks like the software was rushed out, but even so the installation path is something that should take like two lines of code to implement, so why do we have to wait three weeks for it? This is ridiculous.

cybereality
Grand Champion
I asked, and was told the instructions are correct. I'm not sure why people are having problems. In any case, we're making good progress on getting other drives supported officially, so you may just want to hang tight for a bit longer. Thanks.
AMD Ryzen 7 1800X | MSI X370 Titanium | G.Skill 16GB DDR4 3200 | EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 | Corsair Hydro H110i Gigabyte RX Vega 64 x2 | Samsung 960 Evo M.2 500GB | Seagate FireCuda SSHD 2TB | Phanteks ENTHOO EVOLV

SubElement
Explorer


I asked, and was told the instructions are correct. I'm not sure why people are having problems. In any case, we're making good progress on getting other drives supported officially, so you may just want to hang tight for a bit longer. Thanks.


Thanks for the update.

As far as I can tell, the instructions are in fact correct. The linking actually works, it's the Oculus application that isn't liking whatever is going on. The application loads for a microsecond, then closes.

nabnab
Honored Guest
I'm running Windows 10 and I'm getting the same problem as you guys. Then I tried to simlink Software and Downloads, it worked but I'm getting error messages when trying to install Eve:Valkyrie saying I don't have enough space.

I'm getting really pissed off by all of this. This is bonkers.