Can I have IDE 165 and 168 installed at the same time on Win7?

Using Arduino IDE 1.x
1

I'm having a devil of time with some ESP8266 boards: some seem to prefer the 1.65 IDE and (i'm hoping) some of my shiny new boards will use the 1.68 IDE. The problem is that Arduino wants to deinstall 1.65 before it installs 1.68. (on Win7 Pro)
To this point (and because of the kinds of boards we use) I have really old 21-23 installed, V 1.0 and 1.5 and of course 1.65 all on the same system. Now all of a sudden "there can be only one!" (cue ominous music - or Queen)

Any way around this?

2

You can have as many versions as you want installed, you just need to use the "ZIP file for non admin install" instead of the "Installer" download.

3

Second Perts idea as its the method I use for my ESP's.

Unzip the IDE into its own folder and just set up a shortcut to the ide EXE in there on your desktop.