Installing Plugin Packs (WINDOWS VISTA & 7 ONLY)

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UPDATE: After installing v3.0 patch, or WotLK, the installer asks if you would like to move WoW to a different directory to avoid problems.  If you answered yes, then your game will not be in the directory below.  It will instead be in C:\Users\Public\Games\World of Warcraft\Interface\AddOns\.

Windows Vista works very differently than Windows XP, because they added a bunch of features to make it more secure and safe. The biggest change is something called User Access Control (UAC), which is the system than pops up that annoying box every time you want to do something (i.e. "You must have administrator access to delete this file.", OK, "Are you sure you want to delete this file?", YES, "Something has attempted to delete this file. Should I allow this?", ALLOW, etc.). This UAC system does some very sneaky things in the background. In order to prevent programs from writing files into the Program Files directory, something that was very common in Windows XP programs, it secretly redirects the files to a hidden directory in your user profile folder, and tells the program that it wrote it where it thought it did. So the program thinks it put it in the right spot, and Vista keeps the secret. It's good for security, but bad for installing plugins, because WoW is looking for the files in one place, and really you need to put them somewhere else. Hopefully this will help some, but this requires a little more know-how to complete.

1. To install plugins in Vista, you first must have Windows Explorer set so that it shows hidden and system directories.
   
   
   
2. Find your user profile directory. It's probably something like C:\Users\YOUR_USER_NAME, where YOUR_USER_NAME could be something dumb that came with your computer like "Dell User", or your name "Agent Smith".
   
3. Inside your profile folder, you should see a folder called AppData, if you have system and hidden folders displayed properly. The icon will be slightly "ghosty" to indicate this is a hidden folder.
   
4. Inside this folder, should be 3 folders: Local, Roaming, and one other that I forget off-hand. Go into Local.
   
5. Now look for a VirtualStore folder. Go inside that folder.
   
6. Now you should see a bunch of folders that you normally expect to be in your root (i.e. C:\) folder, such as Program Files.
   
7. From here the instructions are basically the same as the Windows XP instructions above. You go inside \Program Files\World of Warcraft\Interface\AddOns\, so that your full directory path is something like C:\Users\MY_USER_NAME\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Interface\AddOns\.
   
   UPDATE: After installing v3.0 patch, or WotLK, the installer asks if you would like to move WoW to a different directory to avoid problems.  If you answered yes, then your game will not be in the directory below.  It will instead be in C:\Users\Public\Games\World of Warcraft\Interface\AddOns\.
   
   
8. After finding this directory once, I suggest you quickly create a favorites link back to it, by dragging the little folder icon from the left side of the address bar down into the favorites section below it. You'll need to return to this folder to run Clean.cmd before every weekly plugin update.