I like to keep my personal and work Skype accounts separate, and also have a “support” account as well, so I like to have multiple versions of Skype running on my work computer. Since upgrading to Windows 10 I am unable to use the “Launcher for Skype” software to have multiple copies running. The only way I found to accomplish what I needed was to use an old version of Skype and launch it on startup with a batch file.

In order to set this up you need to do the following:

1. Install Skype 7.15 or lower (this isn’t that easy to find, you’ll need to search for this on sites which archive old versions of software)
2. Create a batch file “C:\Users\%username%\Skype.bat” with the Skype usernames and passwords you user to login to each account. See a sample batch file below
3. Create a shortcut in “C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup” which opens Skype.bat in a minimized window. If you give the shortcut a Skype icon it won’t even look like a script is running on startup.

Contents of Skype.bat (repeat the last 4 lines for each new account you wish to run, replacing XXXX with your username and YYYY with your password):

@echo off
echo Starting Skype: XXXX...
start "Skype: XXXX" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Skype\Phone\Skype.exe" /secondary /username:XXXX /password:YYYY
echo Connecting as: XXXX...
timeout 20