How to run a 'private' and a 'Prime' Skype simultaneously

By Andrus on April 27, 2007 in Skype Prime ideas.

It seems many Skype Prime users are creating a new Skype name for their services. And many of you have asked if it's possible to run multiple Skype accounts on the same computer. There is no Skype feature for that but it's possible nevertheless with these tips from Ike.

1. Make sure you have another user account (login) for your Windows machine, including a password and admin rights.

1. Right click the Skype icon and select Run as...

1. On the next screen click The following user: and select one different from the one you are currently logged in as on your computer.

1. Voila! - another Skype will open which can be used independantly from your first Skype instance. You can even make calls between them on the same computer.

This may work better in some environments and worse on others. Let us know via comments if this worked for you.

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Comments

Just for your info, this works in Windows XP and I think also in Windows 2000. Vista too. It doesn't work in Windows 98 or earlier.

Just tried it on Windows XP and works like a charm. The only downside is that if you use a new Windows account, all your previous Skype settings (avatar, mood message, wallpaper, etc) are all lost and so you need to copy them all over from the old user account to the new user account for them to appear again.

Yes it may works, but it's a bad hack and it needs twice (3x, 4x... your number of alias names) as much resources.

So please implement a alias-name feature so that I can assign to my Skype account several alias names for different purposes.

It's a highly requested feature (at least in the forum) and at least Jaanus said that it is planned http://forum.skype.com/index.php?act=ST&f=3&t=52631.
Unfortunately his answer is now over one year old and we still don't have that very useful feature.

I somehow do not see The following user: on my system while using Vista Ultimate after running as administrator. Any suggestions?

Great feature, I have seek for it many times.
I think that such feature should be included in regular skype build.

Visit my site http://primeskype.com - Skype Prime Directory

I would also like to open multiple skype accounts on the same computer > I am using a MacBook Pro w/OSX 10.4.1 > can you tell me how this is done, I sure would appreciate it very much - thanks in advance.

Hi... tried it in Vista...need to use the "runas" command from the command prompt, since there is no runas context menu anymore... however: Does not work.

When running as user1 the first skype instance opens (with the config of user1), when I then try to open the second instance with runas /user:user2 ... it jumps into the already open instance from user1

The other way round: When I first run runas /user:user2 Skype opens with the configuration of user2 (nice so far) but when I then open the instance for user1 it just activates the user2 instance...

any ideas??

Skype somehow wiped itself from my computer and a correspondent sent me an incorrect user name so I couldn't retrieve my password. So I set up a new account but all my credits and contacts are on the old account. Can I make my old account the default

I can run several skype instances in Linux version, but why it is unimplemented in windows version?!

Trying to open 2 accounts simulteously with windows xp..when I right click advanced the skype icon, it does not show "run as" and if I go to properties and then advanced, the option of "run with other credential" is in grey..
What do I have to do??
Thanks