Can I have more than one copy of Awasu installed on the same computer?

Prior to 2.2.5, this was easy to do. Installations of Awasu were completely self-contained and all your data files were kept underneath the installation directory so it was easy to have multiple Awasu installations, each in a separate directory.

Starting with 2.2.5, Awasu now stores your data files in the standard locations. This means that if you have two installations of Awasu and you have data files in the standard locations, both Awasu's will find these data files and try to use them. This will cause major problems if the two Awasu's are of different versions!

To avoid this, you should run one or both of your Awasu installations in portable mode. This was designed to allow Awasu to run from a removable drive by forcing your data files to be stored beneath the Awasu installation directory (i.e. on the removable drive) but also fixes this problem since running in portable mode stops Awasu from checking for data files in the standard locations.

To turn on portable mode, simply create a file called .PORTABLE in the Awasu installation directory.

 

Can I run more than one copy of Awasu at the same time?

The short answer is no. Awasu checks if there is another copy already running and if so, switches to that copy instead of starting a new one. It is possible to bypass this check but certain features (such as Awasu's menu items in Internet Explorer's right-click menu and offline feed item/images) will not work properly [1] and is not recommended.

If you are using XP or Vista's Fast User Switching, this problem with some features not working also applies but will be fixed in an upcoming release.

[1] The technical reason for this is that Awasu opens a server socket to implement these features which can only be done once. A second copy of Awasu will start successfully but will not be able to open this port and so any requests for these features will be sent to the first copy of Awasu, not the second.