Xfire In-game and Ventrilo on Vista/Win7
•
9 Feb 2010, 14:11
•
Tutorials
inb4 tons of "ET should be ran as admin anyways", "Xfire sux" and "Trololol XP > all" replies
I experienced Ventrilo push-to-talk borkage if launching several games (including but not limited to ET) through Xfire on Windows Vista/7.
This can be noticed as the push-to-talk simply refusing to work at all, and this is caused by Xfire wanting to launch Enemy Territory as adminstrator, whereas I just want to run ET as user because it works just fine that way, and because of security reasons. I have already whined to them of this here (where I also originally posted this tuto on) and I hope they will notice my post - which I for some reason doubt.
Most people probably run ET as adminstrator on newer Windowses, and that is to my understanding widely considered the "only fix" for ET (and PB) problems on these systems. However, I could get it to run as user with little to none dabbling, and it actually works better as user than as adminstrator to my experience.
But well, back to the topic. If you run Enemy Territory as adminstrator and Ventrilo on the background as user, Enemy Territory "steals" all keypresses so they never reach Ventrilo (in my experience). This is a Windows feature and there's nothing you can do about it except run Ventrilo as adminstrator too, or run ET as user. I would recommend the latter if you can get it to work because running programs as user is way more secure than running them as adminstrator. "But we didn't have to do this in XP", you say. Well, that's because XP enforced this account security very poorly by default. Any program had all access to every part of the system in the default installation (which most users ran), and that was only (partially) fixed if you made two separate accounts, one user-level account and one adminstrator level account, and used the userlevel account to everyday stuff and only did important installations and stuff on the admin account. *NIX systems had this for ages before Windows did, and the new UAC which most people dread is actually a great security improvement which should not be disabled unless absolutely necessary.
But well, I guess I got carried away a bit, here's the tutorial, which I shamelessly copypasted from that Xfire forums thread of mine (Remember, XP users are not concerned by this "annoying feature"):
1) Open up xfire_games.ini with any text editor, e.g. Notepad. The path is C:\ProgramData\Xfire\xfire_games.ini on Vista and Win7 (It's a hidden folder so change your folder options so that you can see them or just open up your file manager and click in the "address bar", type the path in there and press enter).
2) ctrl-f and type in the name of the game (hehe cool ABBA reference) ie. Enemy Territory
3) If the game is supported, it should find an entry such as this:
4) Create a new file into the same directory named dev_games.ini and copypaste the entry there
5) Change RunElevated=1 to RunElevated=0
6) Repeat for every other game that works just as well on user but is still unnecessarily being forced into adminstrator mode by Xfire.
7) Restart Xfire and let it complete the gamescan
8) You just beat the system!
Remember, this resets every time a new games update is released. There are two things you can do:
- Set the xfire_games.ini to "read only" (Right click -> properties) THIS WILL CAUSE THE GAME UPDATES TO FAIL. SO IN OTHER WORDS YOU WONT GET ANY NEW GAME SUPPORT IF THIS IS READ ONLY. To get new game support, don't set it to read only. Or you can set it to read only and when you need support for new games, set it read and write, dload the new game update or apply it by hand by unzipping xfire_games.zip in the Xfire downloads directory (open downloads tab in Xfire main window, find the Game Update, right click -> open directory) and then copypasting the xfire_games.ini file from the archive to C:\ProgramData\Xfire and overwriting as necessary. Then redo the tutorial.
- Just redo all this every time a new game update is released.
To see the games that are being ran as adminstrator by Xfire if you have hidden the startup window telling you "Xfire needs to be ran as adminstrator to provide support for following games", open up your file manager in Vista/Win7, click on a empty spot in the file path bar on the top of your screen (showing what folder you're in) and type in %appdata%\Xfire\xfireuser.ini as in this picture:
and then press enter. It should open the file in Notepad. Now hit Control and F and type in "DisplayUACWarning". It should result in a line quite near the top of the file. Change DisplayUACWarning=0 to DisplayUACWarning=1.
I experienced Ventrilo push-to-talk borkage if launching several games (including but not limited to ET) through Xfire on Windows Vista/7.
This can be noticed as the push-to-talk simply refusing to work at all, and this is caused by Xfire wanting to launch Enemy Territory as adminstrator, whereas I just want to run ET as user because it works just fine that way, and because of security reasons. I have already whined to them of this here (where I also originally posted this tuto on) and I hope they will notice my post - which I for some reason doubt.
Most people probably run ET as adminstrator on newer Windowses, and that is to my understanding widely considered the "only fix" for ET (and PB) problems on these systems. However, I could get it to run as user with little to none dabbling, and it actually works better as user than as adminstrator to my experience.
But well, back to the topic. If you run Enemy Territory as adminstrator and Ventrilo on the background as user, Enemy Territory "steals" all keypresses so they never reach Ventrilo (in my experience). This is a Windows feature and there's nothing you can do about it except run Ventrilo as adminstrator too, or run ET as user. I would recommend the latter if you can get it to work because running programs as user is way more secure than running them as adminstrator. "But we didn't have to do this in XP", you say. Well, that's because XP enforced this account security very poorly by default. Any program had all access to every part of the system in the default installation (which most users ran), and that was only (partially) fixed if you made two separate accounts, one user-level account and one adminstrator level account, and used the userlevel account to everyday stuff and only did important installations and stuff on the admin account. *NIX systems had this for ages before Windows did, and the new UAC which most people dread is actually a great security improvement which should not be disabled unless absolutely necessary.
But well, I guess I got carried away a bit, here's the tutorial, which I shamelessly copypasted from that Xfire forums thread of mine (Remember, XP users are not concerned by this "annoying feature"):
1) Open up xfire_games.ini with any text editor, e.g. Notepad. The path is C:\ProgramData\Xfire\xfire_games.ini on Vista and Win7 (It's a hidden folder so change your folder options so that you can see them or just open up your file manager and click in the "address bar", type the path in there and press enter).
2) ctrl-f and type in the name of the game (hehe cool ABBA reference) ie. Enemy Territory
3) If the game is supported, it should find an entry such as this:
4) Create a new file into the same directory named dev_games.ini and copypaste the entry there
5) Change RunElevated=1 to RunElevated=0
6) Repeat for every other game that works just as well on user but is still unnecessarily being forced into adminstrator mode by Xfire.
7) Restart Xfire and let it complete the gamescan
8) You just beat the system!
Remember, this resets every time a new games update is released. There are two things you can do:
- Set the xfire_games.ini to "read only" (Right click -> properties) THIS WILL CAUSE THE GAME UPDATES TO FAIL. SO IN OTHER WORDS YOU WONT GET ANY NEW GAME SUPPORT IF THIS IS READ ONLY. To get new game support, don't set it to read only. Or you can set it to read only and when you need support for new games, set it read and write, dload the new game update or apply it by hand by unzipping xfire_games.zip in the Xfire downloads directory (open downloads tab in Xfire main window, find the Game Update, right click -> open directory) and then copypasting the xfire_games.ini file from the archive to C:\ProgramData\Xfire and overwriting as necessary. Then redo the tutorial.
- Just redo all this every time a new game update is released.
To see the games that are being ran as adminstrator by Xfire if you have hidden the startup window telling you "Xfire needs to be ran as adminstrator to provide support for following games", open up your file manager in Vista/Win7, click on a empty spot in the file path bar on the top of your screen (showing what folder you're in) and type in %appdata%\Xfire\xfireuser.ini as in this picture:
and then press enter. It should open the file in Notepad. Now hit Control and F and type in "DisplayUACWarning". It should result in a line quite near the top of the file. Change DisplayUACWarning=0 to DisplayUACWarning=1.
coz the game wont write any trojans on your harddrive to steal priceless passwordz when launched in user mode heheheh
I mean, nobody ever logins as root on Linux for general computer use, they shouldn't do that on Windows either.
It's the same on Vista and 7, except there you don't even have to input password on default settings. (You SHOULD be prompted for password for maximum security though) (Yes, I like to keep my computer as secure and quick as possible)
Heck, I could write another tutorial on how to setup your Windows accounts.