Skype is great it allows me to keep in touch with many of my family and friends that live far away. Recently I’ve run into a bit of an issue with the video, I’ll start a conversation with someone and after about 5minutes the video will freeze and my webcam will just hang, the audio still works and I can continue the conversation. The real problem starts when I try to end the call, when trying to close the conversation window Skype just hangs and causes my whole system to just freeze. The only resolution is to restart Windows, this is the only problem I’ve run into with Windows 7 since started using it back in Beta.
After a bunch of research I found out that Windows 7 doesn’t like the newest version of Skype (4.2); on the Skype forums there are quite a few posts on this issue. There are a number of solutions listed from downgrading to older versions, running a different driver, etc. One solution that caught my eye was by a Skype expert, he’s created a wrapper program that sits in-between the driver layer and the Skype (software) layer. The program is called ManyCam and was created to allow users to use the camera for multiple programs simultaneously. The program can be downloaded here and best of all it is free.
Once installed the program automatically starts when Windows starts and Skype picks it up right away. I’ve run a few tests since installing and it works flawlessly. In my troubleshooting I had downgraded to an earlier version but after installing ManyCam Skype was upgraded to the latest version and so far there has been no issues.
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