change windows kit common installation path change windows kit common installation path windows windows

change windows kit common installation path


What worked for me is to first uninstall all instances of Visual Studio, all Windows Software Development Kits, and the Windows SDK AddOn. (Maybe uninstalling Visual Studio was unnecessary.)

Then I went into the registry and I changed some of the values under here:

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows Kits\Installed Roots

On my Windows 10 Pro (v 1809) machine, I had 3 values to change. Here I am showing the default values, and I believe the trailing backslash is important.

KitsRoot    C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\8.0\KitsRoot10  C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\KitsRoot81  C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\8.1\

After modifying these values, I could re-install a kit into the appropriate folder (matching the registry values that I had set).

This also fixes one of the unmodifiable paths for the Visual Studio Professional 2017 installation (presumably it relies on the same registry keys).


Open command prompt and type cd (path to installer).

Then type (installer name) /installpath (any path).

Like this:EmulatorSetup.exe /installpath D:\software\Win10Dev\HoloLens\Emulator

(In this case I am using the HoloLens emulator, but this will work with any Windows Kits installer)