Change mod folder location

Move your mods folder to any other drive

Symbolic links

Symbolic links are similar to regular shortcuts with the difference of being able to link two different locations together.

This allows for changing the location of lets say the mods folder for CoDWaW from the C Drive to any other accessible location i.e. D Drive while the program still accesses the folder as if it was in the original folder as usual.

Very helpful for saving space on your ssd by moving your massive mods library to i.e. your hdd.

I.e.
A shortcut link to the mods folder takes you to the mods folder.

A symbolic link to the mods folder, double click it and the path change is only a \mods but that folder might be on another drive entirely.

This guide should work for almost any game/program. Some anti-cheats could have issues with this but should be fine, it's a build in feature after all.

How to create a symbolic link

1. Open Run dialog (Win key + R)
   
   
2. Type
   

   %userprofile%\appdata\local\Activision\CoDWaW

   and press enter (takes you directly to the folder you need)
   
   
3. Open File Explorer (Win key + E) and in this window open the location you want the mods to be in (any drive)
   
   
4. Create a new folder named mods at that location
   
   
5. Move all the files from the original location to the new location (original folder needs to be empty)
   
   
6. Delete the empty original mods folder.
   
   
7. Win key + R
   
   
8. type cmd and hold shift + control then hit enter and accept the prompt (run as admin)
   
   
9. type

   mklink /J "ORIGINALpathtomodsfolder" "NEWpathtomodsfolder"

   instructions for copying paths below!
   
   example for moving it from C: to D:
   

   mklink /J "C:\...\...\mods" "D:\...\...\mods" (but with your own paths). 

   You should use the " and put a space between the paths when typing the command
   
   
   
10. if you got

    Junction created for path <<===>> newpath

    you were successful!
    It will look like a regular shortcut but it's not, it's a symbolic link.
    
    
    
11. you can repeat this for the players folder as well.

Congratulations!

Couple of things to note, from now on everything that has an auto installer (mods) will think they are installing to C but will actually install to your new location. This should work without any further issues. Symbolic links can be used to move entire games to other locations without breaking functionality, you just learned something very useful that may help you in the future!

Enjoy!

How to copy paths?

• use the top of the explorer window , click it, ctrl + c and right click in cmd to paste OR
  
• Old path: In the CoDWaW folder (step 2) hold shift and right click the mods folder then click copy as path
  
• New path: do the same as the old but for the new mods folder

How to remove this link?

• Symbolic links appear in windows explorer similar to shortcuts, it's enough to right click and delete them. (make sure you delete the LINK not the FOLDER it links to!)

Thanks for reading!

Please rate and favorite if this guide helped you :)

[Pelinkovac CRO]

oh and just if it wasn't clear in the guide,example for moving it from original to new location on D drive would be it's mklink /J "C:\...\...\mods" "D:\...\...\mods" (but with your own paths). You should use the " and put a space between the paths when typing the command

[Pelinkovac CRO]

or you got the syntax wrong , it's mklink /J <Link> <Target> , Link is the one that gets created and it targets the target. so Link would be .C:\......\mods and target would be D:\.......\mods (or any othername for target) but the mods folder for Link (original location) must not exist, this is just going to replace it with an identical name so the game recognizes it

[Pelinkovac CRO]

6. Delete the empty original mods folder. I suspect this is your issue, the symlink has to have the same name as the mods folder but you can't have 2 objects named exactly the same.

[The Door to Guf]

yes i have followed all steps correctly but get the error message "cannot create a file when that file already exists"

[Pelinkovac CRO]

It works perfectly, did you make sure you followed all the steps correctly?

[The Door to Guf]

this guide does not work