Blender 5.2 Installation

Technical Support Technical Support
1

Hi everyone,

After giving it some thought, I decided to install Blender 5.2.

On drive C:\ (partition 1), I really only have my operating system (Win 11 Pro) installed, along with programs that absolutely must be on C:.

On drive D:\ (partition 2), I keep my programs neatly organized by purpose (graphics, programming, office, etc.).

So, I launched “blender-5.2.0-windows-x64.msi” and tried to install Blender to “d:\Prg Grafik\Blender Foundation\Blender 5.2”.

I keep getting the error message: “Installation directory must be on a local hard drive”.

Then I thought: okay, I’ll use the suggested folder, move it manually afterwards, and edit the registry by hand (it wouldn’t be the first time).

But lo and behold, I get the same error message even with the path automatically suggested by the installer: “C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 5.2”.

All previous versions of Blender installed without any issues into the directories I chose.

What should I do?

Thanks in advance.

Regards, Micha

<---------------- German --------------->
Hallo zusammen,

nach langer Überlegung wollte ich Blender 5.2 installieren.

Auf Laufwerk C:\ (Partition 1) habe wirklich nur mein Betriebssystem (Win 11 Pro) installiert, sowie Programme welche partout auf C:\ müssen.

Auf Laufwerk D:\ (Partition 2) habe ich schön, nach Verwendungszweck (Grafik, Programmierung, Office usw.) strukturiert, mein Programme.

Also starte ich “blender-5.2.0-windows-x64.msi” und wollte Blender nach “d:\Prg Grafik\Blender Foundation\Blender 5.2\” installieren.

Ständig kommt die Fehlermeldung “Installation directory must be on a local hard drive”.

Dann habe ich mir gedacht: ok ich nehme den vorgeschlagenen Ordner und verschiebe es hintergher manuell und ändere die Registry von Hand (wäre nicht das erste Mal).

Und siehe da, beim dem vom Setp automatisch vorgeschlagenem Pfad “C:Program Files Blender Foundation Blender 5.2\” kommt die selbe Fehlermeldung.

Alle vorherigen Versionen von Blender ließen sich problemlos in die, von mir gewünschten Verzeichnisse installieren.

Was tun?

Danke im vorraus.

Gruß Micha

2

Both options should work. Strange.

You downloaded the file from the offical blender.org site and tried to install the file? My Win10 tries to install it via store after I click the .msi - I always used “install anyway” to install the .msi directly.

There is of course a portable version of blender you could use without installing anything (https://www.blender.org/download/) under “other versions”. But I´m not sure if the new version will automatically use your settings from your last blender version (and copy the installed addons)…

EDIT: Did you try to install Blender with administrator rights?

3

Thanks for the quick reply.

That is exactly why I wanted to use the .msi installer.
I have separate folders for “Assets,” “PlugIns,” etc.
Both my old version 4 and my current version 5 access them.
With the old installations, the settings from the previous version were always carried over.

I think I’ll give the portable version a try then.

But generally speaking, I wonder why the setup program has a bug like that.

4

My guess it´s not a bug but has something to do with your user rights (that´s why I asked if you tried to install it as administrator). But it should not happen if it´s the same user as last time you´ve installed Blender…

5

So, I went with the portable version.

It was easier than I thought.
I extracted everything and moved it into the prepared “Blender Foundation\Blender 5.2” directory.
Then I added two lines to the Registry ==> done.

When I launched the program for the first time, I was asked if I wanted to import the settings from version 5.0. Naturally, I did that.

Finally, I clicked on “Register” under Preferences → System.

It works perfectly.
My organized directories for assets, plug-ins, etc., were also carried over.

6

The only difference between the portable version from the normal is that one has an installer that knows how to dink with your OS and how to frob some internal workings of Blender to set up some stuff you would otherwise have to do manually.

It is not unusual for installers to balk at non-standard directory layouts (like you have). It is an unfortunate defect and there is no good reason for it other than that the people who put it together didn’t think that far ahead.

Glad you got it working with the “portable” version and used the import settings option.

Second thing you should do is open the Preferences dialog and spend some time on each tab to make sure things are set up the way you like, directories are where you like, etc.

Then go through the interface and adjust stuff to how you want it to be when you start up each time (I like my Outliner/Properties windows to be a little wider and for the N-Panel to be much wider than the default, and I turn off all the obnoxious “Scroll to Active” option (in all eleven outliners open by default) and to get rid of the transform widgets, etc, and save the default startup.

7

Thank you for giving feedback! Sounds like you made the portable version behave exactly like the install-version. Great!

What lines do you add to the registry?

8

Nothing major; “Preferences > System > Register” would probably have done the same thing.
You can see the preview in File Explorer now.
But as I said, clicking “Register” might have achieved the same result.

9

All directory paths were transferred completely and correctly.
I had to do a bit of searching for the assets; there is now a dedicated entry for them in the Preferences menu.