I had an ongoing issue with Skype on one of my Windows 8 PCs. Skype was very unstable, would often freeze during audio and video calls and even when chatting. I went through number of Skype and Windows updates (including Windows 8.1), but the issue was not going away. This was an intermittent problem, it didn’t prevent from using Skype, but was rather annoying. Skype would never crash completely. If the freeze happened when chatting, I just had to wait 10-20 seconds for Skype to get responsive again. If it happened during a call, the call would drop completely and I would have to re-dial.

Reinstalling Skype, updating audio and video drivers, resetting Skype database, and other usual fixes did nothing. Eventually I decided to check if it could be caused by my antivirus – Kaspersky Internet Security. At first I added Skype to the approved application list in Kaspersky, but this didn’t help. Then I completely removed Kaspersky… and bingo! The issue went away completely.

I’m obviously aware that lots of people successfully run Skype and Kaspersky on their machines so there was something else contributing to the issue. However, I moved to another security software on this machine and haven’t investigated this further. Skype freeze never occurred again…

Windows 8.1 64bit
Skype 6
Kaspersky Internet Security 2014