Guide on how to share a single Warframe installation with windows file sharing.

shared_warframe_installation.md

Share a Warframe Installation

Introduction

This guide will help you run Warframe on multiple PCs simultaneously, but only with one copy of Warframe. Very useful for a LAN situation.

You will require a copy of Warframe, and all the PCs must be on a same LAN network.

NOTE: For simplicity, I will refer the computer that HAVE Waframe "source PC" and the computer that DO NOT have Warframe "target PC".

Warframe installation location

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

1. Share Files

1. Right-click on the Warframe folder.
2. Click "Properties"
3. Click the "Sharing" tab
4. Click "Advanced Sharing"
5. Check "Share this folder"
6. Click "Permissions"
7. Click "Add..."
8. Enter the email used to log into Windows
9. Click "Check Names"
10. Click "OK"
11. Select your user
12. Check the first box of the first column to allow full control
13. Click "OK", then "OK" and "Close"

2. Copy Launcher

1. On the target PC, open file explorer and navigate to the source PC.

• Use \\PC-name or \\IP-address

2. Copy Warframe\Tools\Launcher.exe to desired locaiton

3. Setup the launcher

1. Run the launcher
2. Don't change the installation location and "OK"
3. Let the launcher download the ~30 MB update, then accept the licences
4. The launcher will update DirectX components
5. Quit the launher when it attempt to download ~9000 MB of updates

4. Linking Magic

1. Open a command prompt on the source PC
2. Navigate to Warframe\Cache.Windows folder
3. Execute command:dir /b > dir.txt
4. On target PC, open file explorer and navigate to installation folder

• Do this by typing %appdata% in the top bar, go up a folder and double-click "Local"
• Then go to Warframe\Downloaded\Public\Cache.Windows

5. Delete everything inside Cache.Windows folder (on target PC)
6. Copy dir.txt from source PC to Cache.Windows folder on target PC
7. Copy Warframe\Cache.Windows\H.Misc.cache from source PC to Desktop of target PC
8. Still on target PC, crete a text file and rename it to mklink.bat (inside Cache.Windows folder)
9. Right click mklink.bat and click "Edit"
10. Paste in the following code:

@echo off
cd path\to\Cache.Windows
for /f "tokens=*" %%a in (dir.txt) do (mklink "%%a" "\\SOURCE-PC\Warframe\Cache.Windows\%%a")

11. Change path\to\Cache.Windows to the path to Cache.Windows folder (on target PC)
12. Change SOURCE-PC to the computer name or IP address of source PC
13. Save and close mklink.bat
14. Right-click on mklink.bat and click "Run as administrator"
15. The batch file should create a bunch of .symlink files, test if they work by right-click on any symlink and click "Open file location". If it takes you to the Cache.Windows folder on source PC, that means it is correctly linked.
16. Delete H.Misc.cache link in Cache.Windows (on target PC)
17. Copy the actual H.Misc.cache file from Desktop to Cache.Windows folder
18. Run Warframe by starting Launcher.exe
19. Enjoy!