Skype on Win 10, multiplying

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I won’t go into the sordid history but Skype has annoyed me ever since Microsoft took it over and tied it together with a Microsoft account. Before that it was perfect, after that it has given me nothing but grief.

Anyway, the particular grievance I have with it at the moment is that when I reboot my laptop Skype appears to launch itself twice. When Microsoft releases a Skype update I get the dialog inviting me to update, I click OK, and before the update has finished the dialog has appeared again and the update is run for a second time. (If I decline the second update it will just try to run the update twice the next time I reboot).

There is only one Skype.exe on the PC (Skype for Desktop). If I look in task manager I can see 6 processes running (5 are Skype (32 bit), and one is Skype). If I look in Settings > Startup I can see two entries for Skype, one described as “Medium impact” and one described as “High impact”. I can’t see any extra information to show why these are different and why one is more impactful than the other.

Can anyone point me to a fix for this? I found a user reporting what looked like the same issue and the response was to run a command in an elevated Powershell (Get-AppxPackage -allusers Microsoft.SkypeApp | Remove-AppxPackage) but when I tried this I got an instantaneous green band flash across the window which looks like a problem – but it’s impossible to trap any message it contains. It didn’t fix the problem :-/

cheers
T

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Your symptoms (2 “different” prompts to update Skype and “multiple instances” of Skype running) indicate you have both the Skype for Windows Desktop program and Windows 10’s built-in Skype app installed at the same time (typically happens when upgrading from Windows 7 with the Skype program installed to Windows 10 were it’s an app.)

The fix would be to remove either the program or the app so there’s only one version on your PC.

That powershell command you ran is used to remove Windows 10’s built-in Skype app and the green band you saw (white text on a light green background) indicates it succeeded (you’d have seen Red text on a black ground if it failed.) Since the command worked, you should now only see the Desktop version of Skype in your list of installed apps.

BTW, you must reboot your PC for the removal to take full effect.

If your problem persists, I’d suggest completely removing all versions of Skype, reboot, and then reinstall the one you intend to use.

1 user thanked author for this post.

aquatarkus

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In addition, after you have done the above (removed them all, reboot and install the one), be aware that in Skype, in its settings, there is an option to auto start skype with windows startup – I un-check that one.

There is also an option to allow Skype to remain active when you click the X to get rid of it – I also un-check that one. Then it seems to behave correctly.

1 user thanked author for this post.

aquatarkus

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Thanks, makes perfect sense

For some reason I didn’t get notifications for these responses or I’d have thanked you sooner.

Is there any way I can remove Skype and reinstall without losing the attachments in my Skype chat history? A colleague often uses it to send me screenshots of pieces of code.

Once I sort this annoyance out I may return with another one 🙂

Cheers
T

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Not sure exactly where the Skype app saves things, but the Skype for Desktop program saves everything in C:\Users\YourUsername\AppData\Roaming\Skype\

There should be a folder at that location called My Skype Received Files that contains any files and documents sent to you thru Skype.

I’d suggest you “copy” the entire contents of the main Skype folder to another location and then use that to restore everything once you reinstall Skype.

The same procedure should work for saving everything from the Skype app if you can figure out where it stores things.

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It is not only Windows 10. I have had several clients contact me about this on Windows 7 and Windows 8. None of my clients use Windows 10. There does not seem to be a solution to it. From the leaked source code, MS is bundling telemetry data into Skype and this is why there are two windows running. Currently have not found a workable solution to this.

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Completely delete Skype from your AppData and uninstall

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Well, here’s where things are.

I uninstalled Skype. I rebooted. I verified that there was no Skype in my apps or startup. I typed Skype in the start menu and only search options appeared. I  searched for skype in the local disk drives and there was nothing.

I went to skype.com/go/download and reinstalled the latest Skype for desktop.

Logged in. My chat history and attached files appeared.

Checked Settings > Apps: there is one Skype version 8.72.

Checked Settings > Apps > Startup: there are two Skypes.

I guess I wait to find out if I have to run the next update twice.

At least nothing appears to have been harmed by this experience.

cheers
T

 

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