Gaming Is there any way to have 2 seperate Steam installs on a PC and have them run independently

[ChronicMasturbator]

The best comparison i can make is where you put a "portable" txt file in your Dolphin Emulator installation folder so therefore any games played with that install would only interact with that folder so you could make another install folder (for cases, for example, if different Wii/GameCube games worked better with different versions of Dolphin)

The reason i ask is because i did that thing of buying access to another Steam user's account to play the Resident Evil 3 remake for like $5... and so obviously everytime i wanna switch between my account and all the games on it and RE3, i have to log out, go offline and then log back in with the other username and password. It would be just much more convenient if i could just have like a "portable Steam" where i have 1 install folder with his account and the login details saved and set to offline so i could simply double-click the RE3 icon on my desktop any time i wanted to play it... and vice versa - have another with my account with my login details saved and set to online and also accessed by just double-clicking the Steam icon on my desktop. Is it possible?

 

[Mythical]

Not really possible unless you have two windows installs. It's not that hard to swap logins though, but it's also illegal to account share in such a way. You got ripped off paying for access to someone else's account and broke tos. imo pirating is better than that as you're funding people who take money away from the developers and such

 

[ChronicMasturbator]

Not really possible unless you have two windows installs. It's not that hard to swap logins though, but it's also illegal to account share in such a way. You got ripped off paying for access to someone else's account and broke tos. imo pirating is better than that as you're funding people who take money away from the developers and such

I didn't get ripped off because I was able to play it just fine and have already finished it infact. Was just asking because... I don't know… I guess I'm just lazy lol. For $5 I view it more as like back when video stores were around and you rented a game out for a few days or a week etc.

Anyways... someone else did mention VirtualBox... but is it worth it? Can you have a VM with Windows 10 on it aswell... and if you can, is it really worth the effort?

 

[McPringles]

You could try Sandboxie, although I'm not sure how much of a performance hit you'd take. Basically it runs apps in a virtualized 'sandbox' that retains files until you delete it. The stored Steam login in the sandbox could then be completely separate from the one stored in 'normal' Windows.

You could also try setting up family sharing if the RE3 account isn't at its limit, meaning you could play without logging into the other account, but if anyone else is using that account at the same time you'll be kicked off.

 

[Mythical]

I didn't get ripped off because I was able to play it just fine and have already finished it infact. Was just asking because... I don't know… I guess I'm just lazy lol. For $5 I view it more as like back when video stores were around and you rented a game out for a few days or a week etc.

Anyways... someone else did mention VirtualBox... but is it worth it? Can you have a VM with Windows 10 on it aswell... and if you can, is it really worth the effort?

A vm won't allow you to play games well in general (unless very low quality and you have a noice cpu) . Steam Family share is a good idea.

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

A vm won't allow you to play games well in general (unless very low quality and you have a noice cpu) . Steam Family share is a good idea.

Sandboxie isn't a typical VM, you're not running a completely separate OS, it's more like running applications under a different users at the same time on the same OS (though it's a bit more complex). You still have access to all the resources of your PC, it's just sandboxed off.

And that would actually be a solution (or, at least, it was when I tried something similar back in like 2015), installing a second Steam client under Sandboxie should get you around the issue of only one steam client being launched at once.

 

[ChronicMasturbator]

Sandboxie isn't a typical VM, you're not running a completely separate OS, it's more like running applications under a different users at the same time on the same OS (though it's a bit more complex). You still have access to all the resources of your PC, it's just sandboxed off.

And that would actually be a solution (or, at least, it was when I tried something similar back in like 2015), installing a second Steam client under Sandboxie should get you around the issue of only one steam client being launched at once.

Abit late with a reply to this i know, but recently i just felt like playing the remake again and since it's still not cracked and the prices are still too high for such a short game, i did the $5 access-to-someone-elses's-account thingey again and i gave Sandboxie a try (took awhile to figure it out) but anyway just wanted to thank you my friend because it worked exactly like you said. I can literally have 2 different Steam UI's on the screen at the same time and neither interact with each other... completely autonomous... just what i was lookig for So for anyone else looking for a way to have a "Portable Steam"... Sandboxie actually works. Cheers.

 

[krakenx]

Create an additional user account in Windows for the second steam install. You don't even have to log out of Windows to switch user accounts (windows key+L). Make sure to install steam in a different location.

 

[Tcj13]

I had a similar situation, I am using family share so I can see the library of both of my accounts within steam normally. Set family share on your second account to share with your main account and you are golden.

 

[godreborn]

problem with a sticky keyboard @ChronicMasturbator that no one wants to use?

 

[ChronicMasturbator]

problem with a sticky keyboard @ChronicMasturbator that no one wants to use?

No, i lend my keyboard to the other people i live with from time to time... why you ask?

 

[ShroomKing]

I know you already figured it out but here's another way: if you have multiple accounts you can set steam to launch in big picture mode and it will let you choose which account to log into without entering the password every time. Like the "select user" screen on consoles

 

[Kwyjor]

The reason i ask is because i did that thing of buying access to another Steam user's account to play the Resident Evil 3 remake for like $5... and so obviously everytime i wanna switch between my account and all the games on it and RE3, i have to log out, go offline and then log back in with the other username and password.

Can't you enable library sharing on the other account, and then access the other account's steam library from your usual account?

ETA: Oops, @Tcj13 already suggested that.

 

[ChronicMasturbator]

Can't you enable library sharing on the other account, and then access the other account's steam library from your usual account?

ETA: Oops, @Tcj13 already suggested that.

*facepalm* No, because as i went out of my way to make clear, the other account isn't mine. I just simply bought access to someone else's account and i just wanted a way that i didn't have to do the backbreaking heinous task of having to log out and then back in every time i wanted to switch between RE3 and my games (and no... people who sell access to their accounts on Ebay never allow Family Sharing)

 

[cearp]

it's also illegal to account share in such a way.

not illegal (as much as steam/nintendo/sony etc would love for it to), but maybe where you live, a law like that was approved? not where I or most people are though.
like you said later on, it's simply breaking the tos, their rules, which if you get caught, might get you banned.

 

[Kwyjor]

people who sell access to their accounts on Ebay never allow Family Sharing

I've never bought access to an account on eBay before, but how exactly are they going to stop you..? You have the username and password. If you only have access to the account for a limited amount of time, then just turn Family Sharing off when you're done with it. (I'm not clear why they don't just sell Family Sharing access.)

i didn't have to do the backbreaking heinous task of having to log out and then back in every time i wanted to switch

Not sure if you're actually being serious here.

 

[Minox]

not illegal (as much as steam/nintendo/sony etc would love for it to), but maybe where you live, a law like that was approved? not where I or most people are though.
like you said later on, it's simply breaking the tos, their rules, which if you get caught, might get you banned.

Indeed. So long as it is not buying access to a stolen account there should be nothing illegal about this activity.

 

[HideoKojima]

How about two windows session?

 

[The Real Jdbye]

How about two windows session?

That would be an option, especially as you can have multiple users logged on and easily switch between them.

The best comparison i can make is where you put a "portable" txt file in your Dolphin Emulator installation folder so therefore any games played with that install would only interact with that folder so you could make another install folder (for cases, for example, if different Wii/GameCube games worked better with different versions of Dolphin)

The reason i ask is because i did that thing of buying access to another Steam user's account to play the Resident Evil 3 remake for like $5... and so obviously everytime i wanna switch between my account and all the games on it and RE3, i have to log out, go offline and then log back in with the other username and password. It would be just much more convenient if i could just have like a "portable Steam" where i have 1 install folder with his account and the login details saved and set to offline so i could simply double-click the RE3 icon on my desktop any time i wanted to play it... and vice versa - have another with my account with my login details saved and set to online and also accessed by just double-clicking the Steam icon on my desktop. Is it possible?

Quite possible using some form of sandbox. I used to use Thinstall (now VMWare ThinApp) to create portable versions of apps to put on a USB, it can sandbox everything or just folders and registry entries you choose in addition to the install directory. It also appears that Sandboxie will allow you to run a second copy of Steam alongside the first one. I would use 2 separate Steam folders though, or they might try to write/access the same files at the same time and that could cause issues.
Also, an useful feature of batch files is the ability to change environment variables before launching a program, that lets you change where programs store their settings etc or change things like the USERNAME variable, Steam seems to store everything in the install directory though, so that might not be terribly useful here although you could mess with the USERNAME variable and see if that is enough to make it use a different set of credentials (so you can have more than one saved)
Have you tried just having two separate Steam folders? It seems like the credentials are stored in the Steam folder, so that should be all that's required to have two sets.

Note: While you can have two different steam folders pointed to the same game library folder, don't do so if you want to run 2 copies at the same time, as they'll both independently try to download updates and quite probably screw things up.

 

[ChronicMasturbator]

Ok, first of all @Minox... you are spot on. LOL, ofcourse it's not illegal, i haven't pirated anything, but yes it is against Steam TOS but maybe if they didn't charge every one in the world American prices then people wouldn't do stuff like this. How is it fair that i should pay $30 or sometimes even like $40 more than what Americans pay for the exact same game just because i live in Australia? That's why i have zero guilt when it comes to this and even straight-out pirating games.

@The Real Jdbye... yes i already said a couple of times that i already got Sandboxie working and it's doing exactly what i asked for in the first question.

Ok now, speaking of Sandboxie... thought i might aswell ask here because one of you wonderful lovely nerds will probably know because i'm actually not tech savvy at all - that's why i always ask so many questions in my posts lol... but do any of you know if it's possible to use WeMod with my copy of RE3?

How i got it working was i made another install folder called "Steam (sandbox)" and then dragged my Steam installation .exe file into it. So therefore, RE3 isn't sandboxed, the entire new Steam install i did is - which RE3 is simply apart of (hope this isn't getting too confusing) Ok now... i kinda sorta know what Sandboxie is... so i therefore know that the RE3 .exe file isn't going to show up if you try to search for it.

I also have the RE2 remake and when i ran WeMod (for some strange reason) it came up as not installed, but then i learned how to manually search for it and i've tested it and WeMod now works perfect on it. Any of you know how i can do a manual search for the RE3 .exe? Can i even do it for a game that i put in Sandboxie?