so. for various purposes(okay, it's because I can't find a proxy for my browser that doesn't need replacing almost daily) I use a VPN at times. but I don't tend to need to keep it active for long, see... and I'm wondering if anyone's got ideas on how to keep mIRC from reacting to the VPN being cycled. it's a little annoying having two ghosts crop up on either server that I chat on, whenever I do this.

I assume by "VPN being cycled" you mean the VPN times out and disconnects / reconnects? If so, there's nothing you can do except make your VPN not timeout connections. mIRC isn't "reacting" to anything in this case, so much as it is being disconnected from the server. If you lose your connection to the VPN, and mIRC is being routed through the VPN, there's no way mIRC can stay connected. It's not mIRC's fault, it's how TCP connections work.

I mean, when I turn it on and then off, not that I'm losing connection to it.
I was just hoping there was a way to make mIRC bypass that and continue operating through the primrary network adaptor instead of going "oh hey, let's use that virtual one since it's active now". oh well.

No, this is impossible with TCP. The connection is routed through a specific IP/port pair (in addition to the existing TCP route that was established via handshake). You can't change that in the middle of a session. The same thing would happen for any persistent TCP connection on your system. The difference is that most of your other TCP connections (like your browser or mail app) can disconnect/reconnect without issue, since they are not persistent connections. IRC uses the same connection for the duration of the session.

In short: don't turn off your VPN when it's in use. That's equivalent to pulling your cable/dsl out of the jack in your wall.