Enabling multiple user profiles in mIRC

mIRC is by far the most popular IRC client in the world. However, it's a bit of a pain to use if you connect to different networks with different nicks and so on, as mIRC only supports one user profile. One of the ways to get around this is to have multiple mIRC installations for each profile. But as you can well imagine, this is a pain. However, salvation is here as a friend on IRC put me on to this nifty trick to get his happening without all the brute-forcing. Here's how it is done.

It all has to do with short-cuts. Version information for my setup: Windows 7 & mIRC 7.25.

1. First, create a folder named mirc somewhere appropriate.
2. Within this folder, create a folder for each profile that you would like. I have 4 folders in mine named after each of my nicks: nick1, nick2, nick3 and nick4.
3. Now, a standard (non-portable) installation of mIRC will create a default profile for you. This is stored in C:\Users\Jubal\AppData\Roaming\mIRC on my installation where Jubal is my Windows username. Navigate to this folder and copy all its contents.
4. Paste the copied contents in each of our new profile folders. In my case, I pasted it into the nick1, nick2, nick3 and nick4 folders.
5. Now, to make use of these folders, we are going to mess around with the shortcuts. These can be shortcuts on the desktop or the start menu. Create copies of the shortcuts to match the number of profiles that you have created. In my case, I now have four shortcuts on my desktop.
6. Name each shortcut based on the associated profile's nick.
7. Right click on the first (nick1 in my case) shortcut and click on Properties.
8. This should bring up a dialog box with a number of options. In the Target text field, you should be able to see the path to the mIRC executable on your computer. Modify this to look something like the following:
   "C:\Program Files (x86)\mIRC\mirc.exe" -r"E:\mirc\nick1"
   The E:\mirc\nick1 is the location of my profile for nick1. Obviously, the paths have to be switched to match your setup.
9. Click on OK and repeat the exercise for the other shortcuts.
10. ... and that's it. You can now click on each of the shortcuts to load a separate instance of mIRC. Any changes in terms of options, scripts etc. made to each instance will be stored in the appropriate nick's folder. IOW, click on the nick1 shortcut, and change the nick etc. in the options to nick1. Repeat this exercise for each of the other shortcuts as well.

There is of course a question of upgrades. I don't believe that miRC upgrades modify settings all that often. So, this should be only an occasional issue if at all.

Hope this helps!