Guide to running multiple instances with Guild Wars 1 and IS

I think that you can get IS / ISBoxer to work with launching multiple instances of Guild Wars without resorting to this method - It worked without it yesterday, but today as I booted my computer - With no changes - It suddenly stopped working (see my cry-for-help thread).
I figured out a work around, so posting it here.

The challenge with Guild Wars is that it wont allow you to launch multiple instances on one machine, the reason for this is that it picks up the path of the game from the Windows registry, and then try to access a DAT file in there - no matter where you launch the game from. Therefore, the second instance of the game gets an error message.

So, to work around this, do the following:

1) Make a copy of your Guild Wars folder. In this example I have my main installation in "E:\Guild Wars" and a copy in "E:\Guild Wars Second".

2) Create a text file in the first folder, call it "gw1.reg" (if you use Notepad, make sure it don't add a ".txt" at the end) - Paste the following into that file:

Code:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\ArenaNet\Guild Wars]
"Path"="E:\\Guild Wars\\Gw.exe"
"Src"="E:\\Guild Wars\\Gw.exe"


Replace the path I used with your path.

3) Create a text file in the second folder, call it "gw2.reg" (if you use Notepad, make sure it don't add a ".txt" at the end) - Paste the following into that file:

Code:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\ArenaNet\Guild Wars]
"Path"="E:\\Guild Wars Second\\Gw.exe"
"Src"="E:\\Guild Wars Second\\Gw.exe"


Replace the path I used with your path.

4) In IS, Add a game for your first Guild Wars, pointing to the first exe (in my example, "E:\Guild Wars\gw.exe").

5) In IS, go to Configuration -> Game Configuration. And for the Guild Wars game, click "Pre Startup".

6) Insert a command, give it a description like for instance "Registry Fix for GW1", and in the 'Command to execute...' box, enter the following:

Code:

regedit /s E:\Guild Wars\gw1.reg

Replace the path I used with your path (and the filename if you used a different one)

Click Finish and Apply to save.

7) In IS, Add a game for your second Guild Wars, pointing to the second exe (in my example, "E:\Guild Wars Second\gw.exe").

8) In IS, go to Configuration -> Game Configuration. And for the Guild Wars game, click "Pre Startup".

9) Insert a command, give it a description like for instance "Registry Fix for GW1", and in the 'Command to execute...' box, enter the following:

Code:

regedit /s E:\Guild Wars Second\gw2.reg

Replace the path I used with your path (and the filename if you used a different one)

Click Finish and Apply to save.

And that's it, you can repeat this process for as many instances you want to run (I find running more than 2 real hard though from a mechanics perspective). All you need to do now is set up a team in ISBoxer, and make sure the characters load the 2 different Guild Wars games defined in IS.

Again, I think you can get it to work without this fix - But I hope this helps someone if they run into the same problem as me.

[lax]

Very interesting

In that case, I will offer an easy alternative for you to try.

Create a Virtual File called "Software/ArenaNet/Guild Wars/" -- EXACTLY like that but without the quotes, and assign it to your Characters. Each of them will be automatically assigned their own registry key based on their ISBoxer-displayed "Name", though you can configure each "Virtualize as" individually instead if you like. Let me know if this works to solve the problem (I am unable to test that at the moment, but it should work)

Would I be able to run that from 1 IS game as well then? Or still need 2 folders?

Edit: It works, many thanks and much simpler

However, I still need 2 game folders to make it happen it seems.

Question, what exactly does that do? Does it allow each character to maintain their own copy of a certain folder structure in the registry? If so, what does the "Virtualize As" accomplish?

[lax]

Question, what exactly does that do? Does it allow each character to maintain their own copy of a certain folder structure in the registry?

Yes.

If so, what does the "Virtualize As" accomplish?

It says where that Character's copy is. It's automatically generated for you when you link your Character to the Virtual File, but you could change it to have various Characters use the same copy.

The original name is given by the name of the virtual file. When the original is accessed, it gets the "virtualize as" instead. So you will see the copy in the registry (or if it was an actual file, you'd see the copy in the folder next to the orginal).



As for using one folder I'll have to get back to you on that.

As for using one folder I'll have to get back to you on that.

Many thanks so far, this is working very well!

The one folder don't matter much, so don't prioritize looking into it - The error message the GW client gives when running from 1 folder is that it can't get write access to a big .DAT file, and I suppose that unless you somehow virtualized the file locks as well, that would explain the problem?