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A friend of mine is running OSX, and wants to install two versions of World of Warcraft onto the same machine: one being the current official retail version, the second being a much older ("Vanilla") copy to play on private servers with.

They already have the retail (new) version installed on the computer; when they run the installer program to install the older version, it detects the already installed (new) version, preventing the old version from installing (get a "Play" button instead of "Install".)

The root of the problem is the installer detecting an already existing version of the application: how can we 'trick' the installer application so it does not believe the other version of the same application already exists?

  • We've tried renaming the Application's folder to something else (so it shouldn't have been able to check a default file path); it still detected it.
  • I understand OSX is UNIX based and that it doesn't contain a registry like Windows, but is there any type of information that is stored in the OS (other than the Application folder itself) that could allow this installer to detect the presence of the application?
  • (We don't care about running the two installations simultaneously, only that we have both versions installed so one or the other can be played.)

I understand this is a very application-specific problem, but any tips or insight into OSX and "installed applications" would be most helpful. Thanks!

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    Some files are set in /Users/username/Library/Application\ Support/program_name; thus creating another user and installing the program that way could help, but it really depends on where the program stores its files. Note that the Library directory is not visible by default in Lion (if that's what is used), to see or enable it check this: osxdaily.com/2011/07/22/access-user-library-folder-in-os-x-lion
    – lupincho
    Apr 11, 2012 at 6:54
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    Çheck out /Users/Shared, IIRC some Blizzard programs used this as well.
    – Daniel Beck ♦
    Apr 11, 2012 at 7:46
  • Is VMware not an option?
    – Dave
    Sep 14, 2012 at 12:45
  • I suppose virtualizing would be one way to work around the problem, but given the nature of games as they use graphics drivers/hardware, I'd be suspicious of potential incompatibilities.
    – David Elner
    Sep 19, 2012 at 5:09
  • You could try removing the system-wide install, then - if the installer allows you to choose the installation location - install one in one user's specific Applications folder (rather than the system-wide Applications folder) and the other in a separate user's Application folder. Stay logged in to both users, then switch users as required.
    – Dave Everitt
    Jun 22, 2013 at 17:07

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