Problems with AO

Ok, I decided to try AO last night.

I installed and patched 1 client. I copied the whole AO folder to my second hard drive (attempt to reduce access times).

I created 6 accounts. Got them all loaded fine.

Issue 1: 1 char is not in the same "GS" as the other's and so is not really in the same world. Not sure what to do about this, or if this will be a consistant problem.

Issue 2: Do you play in Windowed mode? or just minimize Alts' windows (1 PC)?

Issue 3: My comp was getting bogged down with 6 clients. Intel Q6600 Quad Core. I tried to load Task Manager to switch the affinity of the games to all processors, but when I opened Task Manager, all my AO instances shut down. Possibly the game does not support the use of virtual processors. Any advice on the setup of processor affinity for this game would be very helpful.

That's about it. Another general question would be how do people level from scratch efficiently? It seems like XP is divided by 6 in my 6 man group and there just aren't enough mobs out there to level efficiently.

Thanks in advance.