Skype servers are currently taking a “short break” according to claims on the official website for the worldwide video calling and chat service.
We at the Gadget Helpline started suffering with our own person-to-person communications with the Skype tantrum booting us out of chat, with log-in attempts prompting error messages to appear – and it appears we’re not alone.
The Skype service began to cut out for users across the globe at around 12:15pm following an outage which the company are now looking into after pulling the active service. The Skype website itself is also glitchy and the aforementioned message goes onto say that it was still possible to download and enjoy the Skype software. However, on doing this we found no result – only the same error message repeated.
It’s easy to jump to a conclusion after all the recent high-profile server intrusions with big names such as Sony being toppled by hacking and denial-of-service attacks it’s quite possible that Skype are next in line for these kind of troubles, particularly after being bought out by Microsoft around two weeks ago – an $8.5-billion deal which today looks like a pretty disappointing start to the union.
Numerous users have been jumping over to Twitter and using their 140 characters to give Skype a bashing, to which the company’s account has responded with “Some of you may have problems signing in to Skype and making calls. We’re investigating and hope to have more details to share soon”.
UPDATE:
To make your Skype usable again Gadget Helpline has found a solution – Follow these steps:
- Make sure you have Skype closed – Do this by right clicking the icon in the system tray at the bottom right on your screen and selecting “Quit”.
- Click “Start” then select “Run” from the menu.
- Type “Control Folders” and click OK.
- Click “View” and make sure “Show hidden files and folders” is checked.
- Return to the “Start” menu, selecting “Run” once again.
- Type then click OK
- Delete the shared.xml file and restart Skype.
Have you been experiencing Skype difficulties this afternoon? Let us know at the official Gadget Helpline Facebook or drop us a comment below.