Can you elaborate? There are many things you may mean here.

To be clear, there is no concept of a default “components directory”, being a location where components “should go”.

There is the concept that CF will search implicitly various locations when you invoke a CFC, starting with where your code is running, or the webroot of where that code is running. (And if you specify a path or package name, it looks for a folder of that name in these locations.)

Then it will also look for the CFC in CF’s customtags folder, or locations named in the CF admin “custom tag paths” page, or its “mappings” page (you can search for the location of those with the CF2018 admin search feature, in its top right corner).

And your own code can set application level customtagpaths and mappings, to override the Admin settings.

Thus my request for more clarification of what you may mean.

Are you saying you are moving code from some other server to this one running CF2018, and are you getting errors about CF not being able to find the components?

If so, I would start by looking at the CF admin of the old machine, to see if there are any defined custom tag paths, or any admin mappings. Then look in those folders (on the old machine), as well as the [cf]cfusioncustomtags folder (or the equivalent in any instances other than cfusion). If there are files there of yours, maybe someone forgot to copy those over to the new server, to their corresponding location on the new server.

Let us know if that helps.