Steam as a non-privileged Windows User
The subject is only half true. The solution presented below allows a normal user account to start Steam as an admin. This lets the non-privileged user account escalate to admin to run Steam.
Why not run Steam as a normal user? It’s not supported by Valve. Some games will run but some just die because Steam’s installer service can’t configure dependencies. Not all software places nicely.
Why would you ever want to do this? You attempt to lock down the computer from casual users.
Hold up, isn’t this a security issue then? Yes, if you add a custom game to Steam you could run whatever “game” software you like as the admin account. It’s not perfect, but it will keep casual users from inadvertently destroying our semi-public machines unless they really try (log it and ban it!).
Well then why not everyone run as admin? I suppose I could. I realize this isn’t security but it’s logged, our users are generally not malicious, our machines get wiped almost monthly anyway and it enables the flexibility to install games as needed without bugging me the admin.
Can’t they just replace Steam.exe and run whatever they want? Sure they could. If you lock down the Steam.exe file to read only though then the updater fails. Then users email me upset.
So wait, you lock down your machines, but allow this? Yes, we have temp user profiles so it’s not a huge concern. The system can be compromised but we wipe them and restore from a known good image at regular intervals. This is not a great solution but I’ve not found any others that work.
Still not happy with my answers? I can’t help you, this is what we did.
