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Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Tech | Sorry, we couldn’t connect to Skype!

Have you even encountered such an error? What did you do, or rather, what do you think you had done to deserve such a response from your beloved voice and chat application? It is one of those irritating issues you are likely to face during your lifelong relationship with Skype.

I had my first horror moment after close to 8 cool years of using Skype. Something had gone wrong, though I couldn’t figure out what exactly it was. I went on a wild goose chase, feeding my google search engine, with all sorts of questions and inquiries.

By the time I identified the source of my nightmare, I had been to hell and back. From several futile re-installations to a million password resets and my eventual search for Skype’s web version (which, by the way, does exist at: https://web.skype.com ), I had seen it all.

It was all in vain – well, almost – until one useful clue showed up on page 5 of my search results. I rarely go beyond the second page, but something nudged me to go on. And there it was. Something to do with my internet explorer browser.

Despite several updates and add-ons and versions (probably 11, now), internet explorer has never been the kind of browser to tickle my fancy. So I thought I could do without it. I had binned it, and with it went my Skype functionality.

Several times, I tried to launch internet explorer with little success. The darned browser simply couldn’t show up (I was feeling too lazy to go through a fresh installation). Eventually I had no choice but reinstall IE, and voila, my Skype was back!

I have since faced a couple of related issues, and both had similar solutions. This, of course, may not be a one-size-fits-all solution, but most errors of that particular description have something to do with IE. Sometimes all one needs to do is to update their IE to the latest version.


Dan A.