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SteamVR is updated automatically by Steam. As long as you don’t start Steam, SteamVR is not updated. So the aim of this section is to describe how to start SteamVR without invoking Steam. Luckily this is very simple: SteamVR is started by running c:\program files (x86)\steam\steamapps\common\steamvr\bin\win64\vrmonitor.exe in the default setup. If you create a shortcut to this program, you can start SteamVR without running Steam and updates won’t happen any longer. Until you start Steam. In order to totally prevent updates, see the next section.
How to create a shortcut the simplest way
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While the previous approach prevents automatic updates, accidental updates can still happen. In order to prevent them, you will have to create a self-contained version of SteamVR that you can always roll back to. Creating this version fairly simple: just copy the contents of c:\program files (x86)\steam\steamapps\common\steamvr\ (or the corresponding path on your system) somewhere else. This is the procedure documented by Valve. E.g. in my case I have a copy of SteamVR 1.13.10 on my Desktop, in a folder old steamvr versions. In order to run this old version, we can execute bin\win64\vrstartup inside that folder. If that doesn’t work, we need to do two things:
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