Skype messages are not getting delivered

Question

Since I installed Skype last week at work (we use it for in-office communication) I have been receiving an error in Skype when I try and send a message which manifests itself as a little rotating "waiting" circle next to the messages I am trying to send (similar to the Win7 busy cursor) and the failure of the recipient to receive my message.

Some people have said that messages usually go through within a 10min delay but, as I said, this has been going on for a full week now and none of the messages I attempted to send have gone through. Any idea on why this would happen or how to fix it? The only "answers" I have seen online have been condescending replies of make sure both users are online when you try and send a message :) which is not helpful at all.

Solution 1

I tried uninstalling and deleting all data for my user both in
C:\Program Files (x86)\Skype
and the roaming data in
C:\Users\<USER>\AppData\Roaming\Skype
then doing a clean reinstall. This worked for me and Skype seems to magically be working again.

Solution 2

You likely have a firewall issue. Skype needs a relatively open firewall as it works on a peer to peer basis and uses random ports. It works best with UpNP on the firewall, but I wouldn't enable it on a corporate network. It does seem to be able to pass and use IP addresses in the private IP ranges (10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12, and 192.168.0.0/16).

Personally, I would choose a tool like Jabber for in-house messaging.

Comments

[Russell C]

That sounds like a possible answer but it seems unlikely since all the machines here are imaged off one computer periodically. I'll still ask about it. As to using Jabber... they already have a lot of people using Skype and I doubt they'd want to switch just based on one unidentified online person's recommendation. But I must ask, do you recommend it because of certain merits it has or because it is just your favorite IM system?

[BillThor]

Its not really my favorite as I don't IM very much. I mainly chose because it is much easier to secure as it only requires one port open. Also the server can hold and forward messages to offline users. There are a variety of public servers, and a variety of clients. For an in-house implementation you can run your own server. This can be in the DMZ if you want Internet access or on the LAN if you want it more secure.