I haven't ever had a problem patching multiple copies of WoW.. so here's my full process starting from a clean (no WoW installed) machine:
- Install WoW & TBC. (C:\Program Files/World of Warcraft)
- Run WoW to download all patches up to current version.
- Copy WoW Maximizer.exe & .ini to main WoW folder.
- Make a copy of that WoW folder for each login on my other drive (I like my macros/add-ons separate). (D:\WoW2, D:\WoW3, etc)
- Edit Maximizer.ini in each of the WoW folders for the correct window resolution and screen offset location.
- Make a Multilog.bat script to load up my 5 instances of WoW, using these lines:
"start C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Maximizer.exe"
"ping 127.0.0.1 -n 6"
"start D:\WoW2\Maximizer.exe"
"ping 127.0.0.1 -n 6"
etc..
This will pause about 6 seconds after loading each instance of WoW - enough time to bring up the login screen and position it correctly on my monitors.
- Use Multilog.bat until next Tuesday - patches are coming.
- Load just my main copy of WoW to login and retrieve patch (if any available). Download & patch that install of WoW.
- Using Win Explorer, manually copy new patch files from the main folder to all other WoW install folders. Check the version or date of the files to see which are new.
- Individually load up each of the other WoW installs by loading WoW.exe in each install. Go through the patching process for each one. It should be much faster since you've already got the patch downloaded and copied to the local directory. Exit each WoW install when it is finished.
- Use Multilog.bat to play WoW again.