Skype fix available after outage affects small number of users

If you’re having trouble connecting to Skype this morning, it’s not your computer. The company announced earlier today that its system has gone down once again, the second such outage in the past couple of weeks.

“A small number of you may have problems signing in to Skype,” wrote the VoIP company on its Twitter page. “We’re investigating the cause, and hope to have more details to share soon.” About an hour after that Tweet was published, the company made a statement on its blog saying that it had discovered a “configuration proble” that “has meant some of you have been disconnected from Skype.”

“We’ve identified the cause of the problem, and have begun to address it,” writes Skype’s Peter Parkes on the Skype blog. “If you’ve been affected, you should start to see improvement in the next hour or so. You shouldn’t need to manually sign back in to Skype – it should reconnect automatically when it’s able to do so.”

That hour is now up, and Skype has issued the following fixes to the problem:

Windows

1. Click Start, type run and press Enter. (On Windows XP: Click Start and then Run.)

2. Type the following and click OK.

%appdata%\skype

3. Locate and delete the file shared.xml.

4. If you cannot find this file:

4a. Click Start, type run and press Enter. (On Windows XP: Click Start and then Run.)

4b. Type the following and click OK.

control folders

4c. In the View tab, ensure that Show hidden files and folders is enabled.

4d. Repeat steps 1-3.

5. Restart Skype.

Mac

1. Open Finder and locate the following folder:

~/Library/Application Support/Skype

2. Delete the file shared.xml.

3. Restart Skype.

Please note that the ~ sign means your home folder. You can find your home folder by opening Finder and selecting Go > Home from the menu bar or pressing Command (Apple), Shift and H keys at the same time.

Linux

1. Go to the following folder:

/home/YourLinuxUserName/.Skype

2. Delete the file shared.xml.

3. Restart Skype.

Remember: The Skype folder is a hidden folder – please check Show hidden files in your file browser to view and access it.

It remains unclear what Skype means, exactly, by a “small number” of people. But a quick look at Twitter shows the outage has affected users from around the world.

It remains unclear what Skype meant, exactly, by a “small number” of people. But a quick look at Twitter shows the outage affected users from around the world, which suggests that “small number” actually means “huge number,” or possibly even “everybody.”