Xfire and Steam in Win7

As a former XP user who skipped Vista, the UAC functionality is something new that I’m learning to deal with.

I’m sure a lot of people just turn it off, but I’m trying to find ways to work within the security setup.  I’m happy to click on a UAC prompt when I’m installing a program, that’s not something I do daily, but I don’t want to click on a prompt every time I launch Xfire or Steam.  Xfire requires it be run in admin mode.  Steam doesn’t have to be run that way, but Fallen Earth (which I bought through Steam) does.  If you run a game in Steam that requires it be in admin mode, but Steam is not, then you get this very unhelpful message.

Of course the game is actually available but you either have to run the program directly from the SteamApps folder in admin mode or you have to launch Steam in admin mode.  Either way you’ll get a UAC prompt.  Every time.

Unfortunately Windows 7 doesn’t offer anyway (that I’ve found) to mark specific programs as trusted to avoid the UAC prompt.  The trick is to make the system start the program instead of your user account.  The way to make the system start Steam or Xfire is to use the Task Scheduler.  I found a handy little guide how on the Xfire blog.

Start the Task Scheduler and click on Create Task… from the Action panel on the right-hand side.  You’ll want to set a name for the task, something like SteamAdminNoUAC.  You’ll also want to make sure that the user account is correct and then set the task to only run while the user is logged on and most importantly set it to run with highest privileges.

If you want the task to start when you log on, then you can add a trigger.  Just go to the triggers tab and click on the New… button.

Next, you need to set the program you want started, in this case steam.exe.  Just click on the New… button from the actions tab.

From the conditions tab uncheck the power settings to only run if not on battery and to stop if a battery kicks in.  From the settings tab uncheck the setting to stop the task if it runs longer than a set time.

Once all of the settings are in place click OK.  Now you can start/stop the task from the scheduler and you’ll have Steam or Xfire running in admin mode without having a UAC prompt.

Since I don’t like these programs to autostart when I log onto my machine, I like to create shortcuts and icons for them.  Instead of having a shortcut directly to the program, you’ll need a scheduled task shortcut.  For my Steam task created above I use this:

C:\Windows\System32\schtasks.exe /run /tn SteamAdminNoUAC

This command tells the task scheduler to run the task named SteamAdminNoUAC.

I’ve setup shortcuts for both Steam and Xfire, set icons for the new shortcuts to point to the original executable, and dropped them in the same Programs folders so I can run both from the Start menu.