Hey guys, is there anyway to install secretively?

[ssjkirby]

First I just wanna say, wow it's been forever since I've been here  , and I finally have a top notch PC [i5 and GTX670 just to name some thins] So I'm ready to crank it to 11. But I do have a brother who also uses the comp and plays steam, he never touches oblivion but I want to be safe, is there any way to be discreet about installing the mods?

 

I thought about keeping two copies of the game, one normal, the other modded then copy/paste to the steam directory when one is needed. So, is it possible?

[Ark of Truth]

It's possible but it could cause problems in the long run. It really depends on your brother's age if he is old enough just introduce him to the mods.

[kosukosu1]

You can try installing Oblivion on an external hard drive - it might be slower loading but it'd be safe from your brother - unless he finds the hard drive

[ssjkirby]

Trust me, that'd be horrible, even if he was close to the right age, can't close his mouth for more than 2 seconds :/

[ssjkirby]

You can try installing Oblivion on an external hard drive - it might be slower loading but it'd be safe from your brother - unless he finds the hard drive

That's not a bad idea but I'm not willing to spend 50 bucks just to play with mods Hahah, would a 8 gig usb be big enough to old oblv and a good amount of mods?

[kingkong]

you can make an administrator account on your pc and encrypt your drive and put a solide passeword     just do not forget it

  (did not try to game like this)       a link but you can find others   http://www.nchsoftware.com/encrypt/index.html

 

[Fuzaki]

Well, I was thinking that you could keep two folders, one modded and the other vanilla. Then just rename the modded one when  you need to use it and change it's name back to whatever else when you are done using it. I haven't yet tried this, but I don't think that there would be any problems. Btw, it's funny that this topic showed up, as I was thinking almost the exact same thing when I visited, but I am too lazy to do it at the moment.

[gregathit]

You can do the two folder switchout deal.  Just don't forget to switchout every time or you'll have some explaining to do...........

[kosukosu1]

Oh another thing I thought of was creating a TrueCrypt disk image on your hard drive and install oblivion there. The disk image would be password protected and unless you mount the file with your password, it'll just look like a single file.

 

Never tried this but it might be a little bit slower since the files have to be decrypted on the fly but it might not be too bad.

 

http://www.truecrypt.org/

[RitualClarity]

Get him a steam account and a separate log on to your computer (as a user).

 

A couple of bucks later he can have his own Oblivion to play and not mess with yours. If he is old enough you can even start to introduce him to various mods (proper mods not sex or nude mods...) With a separate account he can later take the game somewhere else when he is older.

 

Oh but mom won't think it is right... can't you share she will say... you say of course you could.. however you will also be playing some  games that he perhaps shouldn't be playing. Besides it gives him something to work for and in the end it will be entirely his to use .. for life!!!!!  That should answer the question without reveling what you are doing with your games...

 

An other up side is you or others like mom and dad can give him video games for birthday or other events ... Soon he too will have a collection. Little brothers love to have stuff that is all theirs.

 

Get in a habit of logging off (win key + L) and problems will be minimized.

[Cezul]

I'd probably try having two copies of Oblivion on the computer.

 

The steam one and the retail box one. Don't have the latter just....ehem... Download it somewhere, shouldn't be a problem if you already got the steam copy.

 

But anyways, i'd keep the steam one 'pure' and the retail version stowed away somewhere, possibly hidden folder like %appdata% or whatever.

[Guest ThatOne]

If you have a much younger brother who plays on your computer, I suggest you use two accounts. Everything that he shouldn't see should go into your password protected account, everything else on the shared one.

This way you can hide anything, not just this one game.

As Ritualclarity said, just say you may play games that are "not suitable for his age" - such as Vampires the Masquerade: Bloodlines or some fighting game that was rated 18+.

[RitualClarity]

Yes like TheOne mentioned you might also have other things, info that you might not want him to access. Not that it would hurt him or his mouth would start to go run off but he can accidentally delete or otherwise change settings and other things that you might not want. He should also be on a limited or perhaps Guest Account instead of an administer account. Anything to limit his use of the computer for anything else.

[JBAnthony]

There's actually a utility made just for this situation called Multiple Oblivion Manager. It allows you to essentially do the multi folder thing without having to manually move stuff around. Not really conveinant for moving between two heavily modded installs (because it takes so much disk space) but should work nicely for this case.

 

http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/41271/?

[Ark of Truth]

TheOne and RC have the right idea. Just create a new Steam account and user on the computer and give him that.

[body_eid]

hey why not deactivate the mods after finishing your play session...that way if he opened oblivion well there is nothing to seee..

[gregathit]

hey why not deactivate the mods after finishing your play session...that way if he opened oblivion well there is nothing to seee..

 

Your assuming that all of the mods are OMOD and not manually or BAIN installed.  That isn't always the case.

[RitualClarity]

hey why not deactivate the mods after finishing your play session...that way if he opened oblivion well there is nothing to seee..

 

 

 

hey why not deactivate the mods after finishing your play session...that way if he opened oblivion well there is nothing to seee..

 

Your assuming that all of the mods are OMOD and not manually or BAIN installed.  That isn't always the case.

 

Also assuming that he isn't clever enought to figure out the mods and active them himself. Anyway some have some pretty good discriptions and if he is concerned the little brother will not be able to keep is mouth shut it dosn't matter if he was able to play them if he figure out what was going on. The OP really needs to secure his PC. Not just for the game sakes but for other personal data that he might want to protect as well.

[squall1151]

you could allways make a account for you or your brother and put a password on the user that way you should be 100% safe.

[bytion]

easiest way to do this: make another accout in windows for your brother, that's how I do it for my mom and dad in their home, they have different games and softwares to use and they don't wan to mess it up, so I setup two accouts for them, u just need to set a password for your accout and u are good.

[WizzyD]

if ya had a 32-64gb usb 3.0 flash drive... or 2.0 w/e.

 

put it up on that i suggest some top tier flash drives like corsair or patriot xporters.

 

patriot xporter

this one is good i think. usb 3.0 backward compatible with 2.0 [woot] 64gb

http://amzn.com/B008WJ7EKU

i have the usb 2.0 version in 8gb and i love it. its really fast in booting a live linux distro and what not. {linux user go figure.}

 

corsair

i have not tried the corsair versions on a personal level but know a few friends that do have them and love them as well.

 

voyager version

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233325

 

survivor version

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233275

 

just choose one that suits your needs.

 

all come in 8-64gb except the corsair the 2 above are available in 8-128gb maybe even 256gb idk atm too lazy too look lol.

 

but yeah i say 64gb is about right  so i can all my mods, backup of data and the installed mods and a mod manager. save games too.

[lol i did this once so tht i can play games on 2 comps/laptops. it was a pita since i had to copy the save data every time i plugged in and b4 i unplugged it.]

 

as always make sure you also have a copy stored else where, so in case drives do fail so all is not lost.

[powerofvoid]

If you have a Steam account, the answer is simple: don't let him on your Steam account.

 

If you have a DVD-based install, things are a little more complicated. I would say deny him access to a critical file (preferably one that will cause the game to fail to boot if it's removed, such as the main executable), either by moving it to a secure location when you're not using it, or just by adjusting the permissions so only you can read it. (your OS can do that, right?)

 

None of these are going to let him play Oblivion, but you mentioned that he doesn't play it anyway, so that's not a major loss.

[ZepD]

If you wanted to be 10000% safe I bealieve you could make an encrypted cointainer (essentially a file, that is created within a drive) with a program like Truecrpyt. Just make the cointainer the size of the game toss it in and mount and open it whenever you want to play. Not even the government could find out your terrible secret then XD.

 

You would need to change the directory of the game in steam to whatever virtual drive it is bieng mounted to by truecrypt, ex... you mount the cointainer to X, then you would need to change the directory to X:\(skyrim folder)\(exe).

 

This is what I would do anyway, bieng able to encrpyt data is somthing everyone should be able to do, highly reccomend truecrpyt.

 

 

Some password advice: You can add special characters to make an easy to remeber password that is ~30 characters to make it impossible to crack with brute force methods

 

ex: you could use ((((((((((PASSWORD)))))))))) or ##########PASSWORD########## , here you have a ( x10 then your password then ) x10 after, or a # repeated 10 times before and after your password. So in essence you just remeber you regular password + a special character and how many times its repeated.

 

 

 

[ZepD]

if ya had a 32-64gb usb 3.0 flash drive... or 2.0 w/e.

 

put it up on that i suggest some top tier flash drives like corsair or patriot xporters.

 

patriot xporter

this one is good i think. usb 3.0 backward compatible with 2.0 [woot] 64gb

http://amzn.com/B008WJ7EKU

i have the usb 2.0 version in 8gb and i love it. its really fast in booting a live linux distro and what not. {linux user go figure.}

 

corsair

i have not tried the corsair versions on a personal level but know a few friends that do have them and love them as well.

 

voyager version

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233325

 

survivor version

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233275

 

just choose one that suits your needs.

 

all come in 8-64gb except the corsair the 2 above are available in 8-128gb maybe even 256gb idk atm too lazy too look lol.

 

but yeah i say 64gb is about right  so i can all my mods, backup of data and the installed mods and a mod manager. save games too.

[lol i did this once so tht i can play games on 2 comps/laptops. it was a pita since i had to copy the save data every time i plugged in and b4 i unplugged it.]

 

as always make sure you also have a copy stored else where, so in case drives do fail so all is not lost.

 

 

 

Why spend that much on a 64gb flash drive when you can just buy a 1-2tb portable usb 3.0 external drive for just a little more money?

[Vaukalak]

It`s all too complicated.
Remember KISS principle - "Keep It Simple, Stupid!"
Just create a .bat file with following contents in your steam folder:
 

rename "Oblivion" "Oblivion-temp"
rename "Oblivion2" "Oblivion"
rename "Oblivion-temp" "Oblivion2"

Every time you run it - it swaps folders Oblivion and Oblivion2, so you can keep unmodded Oblivion  in one of them, modded in other.