Application: Steam
Category: Games
Description: Steam is a platform to play a lot of Steam-enabled games from any PC with Steam installed, join the community and chat with your friends.
Download Steam Portable 0.2 Development Test 1 [542KB download / 477KB installed]
(MD5: 2df74e7860a68ea8f5ce029155aadeef)
IMPORTANT NOTE:
Do not use any compression (like UPX) for any .exe or .dll as this will trigger the VAC (Valve-Anti-Cheat).
EVEN MORE IMPORTANT NOTE:
This has not been updated for a long time and probably will not receive any update from the original authors (besides never having been finished at all). So everybody is strongly encouraged to NOT use this launcher. It will not be portable and might even break things (local Steam installations specifically).
Release Notes:
Development Test 2 (2010-02-07):
- bug fixed: Launcher quits after download and at next startup deletes all registry entries from a locally installed Steam.
Development Test 1 (2010-02-07): Initial release
Known issues:
- When installing new games, installer and uninstaller entries will be left
- Only compatible with Source and GoldSrc games
- When changing from a 64 bit machine to a 32 bit machine, another version of the game engine might be downloaded
- The Run-Key in the Registry isn't checked by the launcher yet
- When the launcher is forced to quit during startup, it will break the Steam/Valve Registry entries at next startup
Done by me (benedikt93) and radarman36.
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I'm surprised that this actually got released. I will definatly need to try this out. Is it an online installer, or just a launcher?
Simplifying daily life through technology
The PA.c installer isn't online, but the launcher offers to download Steam on first run. Seems odd... I'm pretty sure the proper way with a PAF app is to do the download and extraction via installer.ini.
@Stevoisiak:
It's as Bruce mentioned an online installer, but it also offers you the possibility to copy a local installation with all your games, settings, ... and registry items into its App and Data folders.
@Bruce:
It doesn't download Steam via the installer.ini as it lets you choose between copying a local installation OR downloading. Otherwise it would be downloaded in both cases.
And the launcher would still have to extract the Steam installer itself as the PA.c installer only supports extracting from zip - files and not from msi - files.
So we would have to edit the PA.c installer's source to implement this.
"Der Klügere gibt nach, deshalb regieren Dumme die Welt."
In the release notes, you mention development test 2. What development test 2?
Simplifying daily life through technology
That one behind that link in the first post. Sorry for this I'll recompile it with the correct version information and than update the link.
I had removed the link from dev Test 1 very quickly as it had the mistake mentioned above breaking the Steam registry entries.
"Der Klügere gibt nach, deshalb regieren Dumme die Welt."
ive been playing around with this and i have to say i really like the concept behind it. ill keep looking at it and tinkering with it and ill let u know if anything comes up or anything that can help you.
For me when I try to login in. It sits there... doing nothing.
Sits there not responding and I even left it on for 20 minutes. It disappears.
EDIT: I run it a bit and it can't connect to the steam network
try running it as a admin??
I'm on Windows XP SP3
But you can see the Steam window saying its connecting to your account?
Did you install it via the integrated downloader or by copying a local installation?
"Der Klügere gibt nach, deshalb regieren Dumme die Welt."
integrated downloader
Did you try to run this portable Steam on another computer, maybe with Vista / 7?
Or are you able to log into the Steam network from your computer via a normaly installed version?
If someone else is able to run Steam Portable on XP (SP3), please post here. Then we would know that the issue isn't related to the OS.
"Der Klügere gibt nach, deshalb regieren Dumme die Welt."
No
Yes
So your problem is something with our launcher.
Are you running a 64 bit or 32 bit machine ?
I myself only tested 64 bit, not sure if anyone could use it on a 32 bit machine.
I'm going to chekc the registry keys in the launcher, there may be a mistake.
"Der Klügere gibt nach, deshalb regieren Dumme die Welt."
32 bit
I was gonna make one of these, but I had a very bad problem where backing up/restoring/renaming a VERY LARGE local Steam registry key (if you have a lot of friends and/or games it will be quite big) takes a few minutes. regedit.exe can rename keys instantly but AFAIK it's by directly manipulating the hive files and not through any public APIs I know of, the public APIs move individual values one at a time hence why it takes so long.
Anyways did you address this issue or not? Just curious.
Signature automatically removed for being too awesome.
I know of this issue. My Valve Registry keys were quite big, too (until a test version of Steam Portable broke it
)
But for me this never took much time. But here I also wanted to hear some feedback as my PC is relatively quick. For others this may take more time.
If possible, we also thought of adding a progressbar but radarman36 who tried to didn't succeed 'til now.
"Der Klügere gibt nach, deshalb regieren Dumme die Welt."
Yeahh, if anyone know how to put a working progress bar on a SILENT NSIS installer, please share
if i'm not wrong there is one at the O.o launcher.
you might look there.
That's OO.o itself doing that progressbar. The splash is part of OO.o.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
You can make it not silent and only have the "Installing" page. Then whatever you want to show progress on you put in a Section, though this might require some code restructuring and I'm not sure how good NSIS would be at showing progress for whatever you're doing.
I tried something similar with Google Chrome Portable and it kinda worked ok, I ended up scrapping that idea though. I think because I wanted a different page, but the "Installing" page was mandatory if you weren't silent. So it could work for you.
Signature automatically removed for being too awesome.
Thx for your help, but radarman36 already solved the problem with the NSIS plugin NxS.
"Der Klügere gibt nach, deshalb regieren Dumme die Welt."
i have been running it on win 7 and it works really good. today at school i will try it out because we have win xp there so i will let everyone know what goes on there.
Thanks for the feedback asylum.
Moreover @Benedikt, I made an updated version of the launcher, with a WORKING progress bar. PM on Steam please
i tried it out at school and it was on the xp professional and it worked for me no problem. i will keep testing it out and seeing what might cause it to do this and then let everyone know.
Was going to try this again but the Download is Down.
Does this keep all the registry on the portable drive?
any updates, known issues/bugs fixes?
Personally, I don't have any news of Benedikt. On my own, I made Windows 7 integration of the launcher (taskbar progression), and some enhancements. I have to test them, but the launcher will continue portabilizing only the Steam Client, and Source Games.
All other games won't be fully portable. (Benedikt was working on a code allowing to portabilize other Steam games, but no news, so no code.)
And maybe msi extracting when downloading Steam won't work. (depends of computers)
I need testers : if anyone is interested, I'll create a new topic with my updated version (but for only testing purposes).
Actually, there weren't any news you could have had. Only thing I did was starting from scratch using PAL some 2 or 3 weeks ago, though I didn't yet do much.
I could also put your version here, so no need for a new topic. We should probably get in touch on Steam again to talk further.
"Der Klügere gibt nach, deshalb regieren Dumme die Welt."
No problem, I'm always connected.
Glad to see that this project is not dead, I'll be really proud if we work together and succeed to create a fully portable version of the awesome Steam Client.
Can an application be portable if it requires Administrator rights to run? This launcher does not require it, but Steam itself does require Administrator rights to run because of the steam service. I don't know if this can neccessarily be portable, but hey, what do I know?
BUDYBOY40!!!
if you run w/o admin and don't properly quit before logging out, steam will stop working with any version
This breaks with the new Steam Guard system. Please try to fix it!
I have Steam currently installed and I downloaded this and tried it out, it worked fine. Then, I go to the already installed Steam and it has to repair its registry keys. Not a huge problem but it might be something you'd want to fix.
I've tried this in the school and it has to access the registry. This is NOT a portable app, PLEASE FIX! The school computers don't allow registry access so this is a big problem.
Like many portable apps, this will not work on a computer locked down in specific ways. While standard Limited and Guest accounts allow registry access, a computer locked down to extreme levels (no registry access) will break a ton of portable software, not just this. In cases like this, there is no workaround.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
The more important problem is probably that this is totally outdated and unlikely to receive any update by me or radarman36 at all; at least I do lack the motivation to put much time in this.
I'll add a note on this in the main post.
"Der Klügere gibt nach, deshalb regieren Dumme die Welt."
Actually, it's standard limited account access from Windows 7, all the other portable apps work fine on school computers, it just doesn't have enough access to write to the registry. I play games like Saurbraten (and one that isn't a Portable App at all called Nexuiz, awesome game). I believe portable apps aren't supposed to use the registry in the first place. There should just be a txt document inside of the Data folder that has a fake registry for that kind of thing.
Registry access is just fine. The apps just need to clean up after. And on a standard limited account, you can only write to that account's part of the registry anyway. Regardless, you won't be able to use Steam on your school's computers.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
This is an old post but i would like to try this version . The problem is that Windows Defender recognises this as malware.
Is it safe to use ?
Also how does this version perform in terms of portability , does it create registry entries ?
but I'd recommend against it, unless you'd like to try updating the launcher? I'd highly recommend you re-read the first post on this thread, the last paragraph(s) answer your questions, as far as this project's current state is concerned.
In the end, however, I think that only the Steam client, ITSELF, could reliably be made portable. Any app or game you install via that client could break portability very easily, since they end up being actually INSTALLED, and someone would have to sit down and make each and every app and game you installed portable, which is not legal in some cases, technically nearly impossible in others, and still others would already be portable.
As for the malware detection from Windows Defender, the only suggestion I have would be to upload the file(s) WD has a problem with to someplace like virustotal, for a "second opinion" (or forty), to make sure it's not a false positive.
TL;DR: you'd be better off trying to run this in some kind of virtual machine, if you want both the Steam client and your apps and games in it to be actually portable.