I had to move the BOINC and BOINC Data folder from the drive I installed it in to another one. This caused some problems, but way more than I anticipated, as I thought I only had to reconnect to my account manager to get the tasks started again.

After I disconnected the original drive I saw some errors pop up and BOINC did not restart as usual, as it was still looking for its data on D:/BOINC Data, but D:/ no longer existed. I thought I could easily solve this by uninstalling and reinstalling BOINC on E:/, where I moved it, but both the uninstaller, and the installer I used previously, threw up an error while looking for D:/ and neither would work.

Apparently the installer remembered where I asked it to install BOINC previously and used that as the default directory. When it couldn't find it, it flat-out refused to work. I'm not sure if this was saved in the installer's own .exe, and I don't know if redownloading it would have worked. Before that I changed drive E:/'s letter to D:/ in the device manager so the uninstaller and installer would work, uninstalled BOINC, set the installer's default directory to C:/, and then changed D:/ back to E:/ so I wouldn't get 99 other problems. After that I could install BOINC back to E:/ normally.

I probably could have avoided this problem by just uninstalling and reinstalling BOINC before moving the directories and disconnecting the drive like a responsible user, but having this much trouble from a simple directory mismatch seems excessive. Therefore I don't think a config file specifying the directories of the BOINC and BOINC data folders, so the program and the installer know where to look, is an unnecessary luxury. Plus, I think the installer certainly shouldn't stop working when it can't find its default directory. I'm in no position to make demands but I hope you agree.

BOINC version: 7.4.4.2 (x64)
OS: Windows 7
Account manager: Charity Engine

BOINC and the Windows installer that installs BOINC use the registry to store and read the paths to the install directory and data directory.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Space Sciences Laboratory, U.C. Berkeley\BOINC Setup\ holds those paths.

When the paths are physically missing, Windows will get confused and you'll see the behaviour you've seen.

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