PowerShell script to create symbolically linked (mklink) copies of WoW

[Mukade]

I'd strongly advise against using symlinked folders any more (or even seperate whole installations).

The most recent changes to how WoW updates itself do not play well at all with symlinked installs, namely the downloading of content while in game, that cannot be disabled by running wow.exe without launcher.exe, and the locking of files to prevent them being written while one of the clients is modifying them. I've had numerous crashes shortly after updates, which I could only fix by deleting the files mentioned in the crash reports, and having them download all over again. Repair.exe of course says nothing is wrong, even with 3GB data files missing. Having to run the launcher from each individual folder kind of defeats the purpose of having a common set of folders for each install.

The wow client also updates the registry every time it's run, modifying the program's location to the location it was last run from. This affects programs like WoW Model Viewer and the Wowhead client.


There isn't even any need to clone folders any more. The only reason I was doing it was because there weren't enough macros available per character, until I could give each one the use of all the per-account macros too.

Addons (like Jamba, or the addon part of ISBoxer, which is configured from the main program) will give you all the macros you need, without taking up any of the normal character or account macro slots.

If you want to have a seperate config.wtf file for each character, you can do that without having to maintain seperate folders, simply by having a powershell script build or swap it in before launching WoW (if you're using HKN. ISBoxer has this built in).

[crazedfred]

Addons (like Jamba, or the addon part of ISBoxer, which is configured from the main program) will give you all the macros you need, without taking up any of the normal character or account macro slots.

I'm using ISBoxer; how do I get at either the IDBoxer or Jamba macro features?

[Zappy]

Since this thread was dug up from the past, i'll give my update as I still still use symlink'ing and find it quite effective without any of the issues that Mukade describes.

If you're using symlinks, the trick with the 4.0.1 patch is having the WoW.mfil and WoW.tfil symlinked as that files get exclusively locked by your first instance, and the others won't attempt to download content on the fly. This is what causes the crash.

I've installed WoW on my SSD ( d: ), and created a "Multiboxing" directory. Underneath that, I have five subdirectories "a", "b", "c", "d", & "e", and copied the following batch file into each one. This will recreate all the subdirectories and symlink whatever needs linked. I've only used this in windows 7, so use at your own risk.


mklink /d Data "D:\World of Warcraft\Data"
mklink /d Cache "D:\World of Warcraft\Cache"

md Errors

mklink /d Interface "D:\World of Warcraft\Interface"

md Logs
md WTF

mklink "BackgroundDownloader.exe" "D:\World of Warcraft\BackgroundDownloader.exe"
mklink "Burning Crusade Install Log.html" "D:\World of Warcraft\Burning Crusade Install Log.html"
mklink "dbghelp.dll" "D:\World of Warcraft\dbghelp.dll"
mklink "DivxDecoder.dll" "D:\World of Warcraft\DivxDecoder.dll"
mklink "ijl15.dll" "D:\World of Warcraft\ijl15.dll"

copy "D:\World of Warcraft\Launcher.exe" Launcher.exe
copy "D:\World of Warcraft\Wow.exe" Wow.exe
copy "D:\World of Warcraft\Scan.dll" Scan.dll

mklink "Patch.html" "D:\World of Warcraft\Patch.html"
mklink "Patch.txt" "D:\World of Warcraft\Patch.txt"
mklink "realmlist.wtf" "D:\World of Warcraft\realmlist.wtf"
mklink "Repair.exe" "D:\World of Warcraft\Repair.exe"
mklink "unicows.dll" "D:\World of Warcraft\unicows.dll"
mklink "World of Warcraft Install Log.html" "D:\World of Warcraft\World of Warcraft Install Log.html"
mklink "WowError.exe" "D:\World of Warcraft\WowError.exe"
mklink "Scan.dll" "D:\World of Warcraft\Scan.dll"
mklink "Battle.net.dll" "D:\World of Warcraft\Battle.net.dll"

mklink "WoW.mfil" "D:\World of Warcraft\WoW.mfil"
mklink "WoW.tfil" "D:\World of Warcraft\WoW.tfil"



What I like about this setup is that you retain your own WTF directory for saving customized settings for each toon, and when I play solo, I'm playing from the main directory which has all the graphics maxed.

Before I log on to multibox, I always hit the launcher and see if there's an update, if an update is there, I let it do it's thing then re-run my batch file, otherwise, I simply close to launcher and start everything up with my broadcasting software.