Chat Programs Have Severe Problems

Hey all,

First, I've made another thread like this and it was approved, but the content disappeared. I can't communicate with anyone so I'm just making another thread and hoping a mod sees the problem I'm having here.

I'm writing on behalf of my girlfriend, who's been having some fairly severe problems with her computer regarding chat programs.

First, she is running Windows 7 and the latest version of skype. If there is any other information you need, I will provide it.

Recently, we noticed that video calls or screen sharing on skype caused the calls to stop working. Usually, her voice would break up and the call would end. On her side, she said the mouse moved sporadically and the computer slowed down significantly, to the point where it may barely have worked at all. Any windows she had open started flashing white. The problem became more frequent with time, until one day we couldn't even hold a conversation for a few minutes if we had tried to use video earlier in the day. She tried everything from rebooting to checking her graphics card drivers, but nothing worked.

We switched to AIM and had the same problem, so we reverted to skype and she did a system restore to an earlier point, which worked for awhile.

Yesterday, we briefly tried video again. It was fine for the most part, but long after we turned off the video and the computer restarted, the computer started having problems again. They started while she was watching a video on the nostalgia critic website, which uses blip (I'm not sure if that's relevant). We did not have this same problem with blip last week, which leads us to believe that our problems are really due to skype video chat.

She ran CCleaner yesterday and things seemed to work for awhile. Today, however, the call had trouble and did the same thing as before. We hadn't used video since she ran CCleaner.

Neither of us is sure how to even diagnose this problem, much less solve it, so any help will be appreciated.

 

So it only slows down when using the video/audio form of chats?

You might want to look for the latest drivers for your webcam.

 

She hasn't checked her webcam drivers, but it doesn't always happen with video. Sometimes, it just happens with screen sharing, and most recently it's happened without any video at all.

She said she'll double check to make sure everything's updated, but I doubt it's that.