"skype has encountered a problem and needs to close" message

[kelseyshunter]

My skype was working fine until last week when I tried to open it and a message from Microsoft came up saying "skype has encountered a problem and needs to close"

I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling the newest version of skype. I have windows xp, firefox, and internet explorer. Any ideas?

Thank you for any help you can give me!

[g4pilut]

What version Service Pack do you have installed?  If it's SP3, try doing a full uninstall of Skype using Revo:  http://www.revouninstaller.com/

Then install Skype 5.6.0.110 using the full installer from this link:

http://www.skype.com/go/getskype-full-56

If the problem still persists, in Start > Run type event viewer <enter> .  Click on Adminstrative Events and scroll down looking in the Source column for Application errors.  Click on any of those errors and look for Skype in the General tab.  If there are any, copy and past the error report here.

[kelseyshunter]

Thank you for your help.

I do have SP3 so I uninstalled skype using revo and then reinstalled it with the link you gave me. The reinstall was successful, but the same error popped up when I tried to run skype.

I looked up the event viewer for errors and found this:

"Faulting application skype.exe, version 5.6.0.110, faulting module skype.exe, version 5.6.0.110, fault address 0x001 aecc0."

[g4pilut]

That error message doesn't shed any light.  Try this. 

Hold the Windows key and type r.  In the box that comes up type what you see here and click OK. 

Scroll down to the \Skype folder and rename it....something like Skype_old.  Try to start Skype again and see if that helped any.

edit:  It occurred to me that since you uninstalled with Revo the \Skype folder has already been deleted and recreated.  Renaming it again probably won't help.

What anti-virus/firewall are you running?

[kelseyshunter]

I actually tried to rename it when I was originally trying to fix the problem and it didnt work.

I have McAfee. I have had this ever since I started using skype, so it shouldn't be causing the problems now, should it?

[g4pilut]

It might be worth disabling McAfee as a troubleshooting step. If that makes no difference, also as a troubleshooting step you might try an older version such as 4.2.0.187.

http://filehippo.com/download_skype/8287/

[kelseyshunter]

Nothing is working. Thanks for trying though. If you know anything else I could try please let me know.

[pixydusthalo]

Did you ever find a solution for this problem? I have encountered the same issue and no trouble shooting options I have found or tried have worked either....

[TheUberOverLord]

The quickest, method, currently, to resolve this, is to install over, what you have, using the beta release, here: http://skype.com/go/getskype-beta

[maryvc]

I started having the same problem yesterday as describedin the subject line.  Do I need to uninstall my current version of skype before loading the beta version?