External Hard Drive Challenge

[stubrookes]

Quick question folks... I only have a work laptop, my Employer does not allow anything to be installed for personal use. I did install Steam/Football Manager and got told, quite firmly, to remove it.

So, trying to be a smart-ar$e, I've installed Steam to my External HDD easily. However, when installing Football Manager 2013, it installs the actual game to my PC (or at least it shows up in my Add/Remove programms, where as Steam doesn't). Is there any way I can make Steam download the game to my External HDD.

That way, I can play my Steam library on my PC and my employer is happy as I'm not downloading s/w to their laptop.

Help please and many thanks in advance. :)

[stubrookes]

Oh, and before people say... I did move the SteamApps folder to my external hard drive and FM2013 showed up. However, when I then deleted FM2013 from Windows (Add/Remove Programes) it went and deleted it from the SteamApps folder on my external HDD for some reason.

I have tried searching for an answer, but can't find my specific problem.

[reznickk]

Locate your game folder for Football Manager 2013 and CUT the folder and insert into Common Folder: as shown below (Yours will be a different drive because its an external, mine is F: for external)

Once you cut the Folder out of where it is located, simply Paste it into the Common folder and you should be good to go with launching/playing Football Manager 2013 off the external without you'r douchebag boss ridin your ass like a camal :)

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common

[reznickk]

After this, for future installs, go to your Steam Settings, and change the route of download/install.

EXAMPLE:(F: external)
F:\Steam\steamapps\common

[stubrookes]

Thanks for that, I'll give that a go.

[stubrookes]

Still something missing. Football Manger 2013 is installed on my External hard drive under the D:\Steam\steamsapps\common, its where the main application file is. I've moved the game specific local content to my external drive too. However, Windows still seems to think I've got Football Manager 2013 installed (its showing in Add/Remove Programmes), but when I un-install it from there, it uninstalls it from Steam on my external HDD. Makes no sense...

Thoughts?

[stubrookes]

Fixed it... As soon as I un-plugged my external HDD, Add/Remove Programmes came up with an error saying FM2013 couldn't be found... I plugged external HDD back in, Steam and FM2013 start up fine, and seems to have removed any local content.

Thanks for your help. :)

[DarkCrystalMethod]

I think your employer only wants your work computer to be used for work. They (should) know all the security settings and all the applications that are on it. If they have to fix their computer your games are at risk of being deleted (shouldn't be there, but you somewhat fixed it). But still, all those registry entries for steam and valve and your games exist which means next time they examine it they might have a problem with you, wipe your game disk (how would they know for sure you don't bring work home on that thing), re-initialize your computer(Do you log onto a domain that can both check and enforce against extra programs?), and maybe give you a boot to the unemployment line.
And even if you brought your own computer with games, I sure wouldn't want that thing crawling around on my business network.

[stubrookes]

Thanks for comments Crystal, but its more worries about licensing software correctly. So there way around it is to say that nobody can use non-approved s/w, that way they don't have to worry about licensing problems, illegal software etc and being held responsible for it. They've already said they don't mind me using my laptop, if the game is held and runs from elsewhere. :) Result. Thanks anyway though.