In Part 1, you learned several ways to log several avatars onto Second Life simultaneously on a single computer. Now, in Part 2, you’ll learn how to set the target so you can run multiple instances of the viewer simultaneously, and you’ll see it demonstrated in two videos by Torley Linden, one for Windows and one for the Mac.  This picture is a scene from the Windows video.

To run several instances of the viewer simultaneously, you need to add "-multiple" to the target line. To do this, take the following steps:

1. Right click the shortcut on your desktop and left click "Properties"
2. Under the Shortcut tab, put your cursor on the "Target" line and use the right arrow key to move to the end of the line.
3.Add a space to the end of the line and then after the space, type "-multiple"

That’s it! With the current version of any of the viewers mentioned above, you’ll be able to log on as many avatars simultaneously as your computer supports.

There is one problem, however. The next time you install an updated version of the viewer, the shortcut will be replaced and you’ll have to add "-multiple" all over again. You can get around this by renaming the shortcut. This can be done either by right clicking the short cut and left clicking "Rename", or by opening the shortcut Properties tab as described above and typing a new name on the first line. For example, I’ve renamed my standard Second Life viewer shortcut to "Second Life – multiple". Doing it this way, you will be able to continue using the shortcut without changes after you install updated viewers.

One note: if you run multiple copies of the same viewer simultaneously, Voice will work only on the first one. Also remember that each copy uses system resources and will slow your computer.  Using several computers will usually result in better performance than using a single computer.

Here is the Windows video:

Torley Linden has also made a version telling how to run multiple instances of the viewer on a Mac:

The other parts in this series are:
Part 1: Four ways of running multiple viewers and avatars simultaneously
Part 3: Running multiple viewers and avatars on multiple computers with a KVM switch.
Part 4: Why on earth (ok, virtual Earth!) would someone want to run multiple viewers and avatars simultaneously?

You can get information about where to download alternate Second Life viewers at wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Alternate_viewers#Third-party_Viewers.