Skype hangs up on users yet again

More problems, less chat

Updated Users around the world once again experienced problems using Skype on Tuesday morning.

As with seemingly identical problems last month, punters initially experienced frustration signing into the service before later reporting that the VoIP software had crashed on their machine.

Skype played down the scope of the problem, which it blamed on a ""configuration problem", in a update to its status page. It promised to resolve the snafu via an automatic update that will be in place within an hour or so.

The symptoms of the latest glitch, at least, are identical to problems experienced across the VoIP network less than a fortnight ago. Resolving the problem then involved the somewhat fiddly business of deleting a file called "shared.xml" on users' machines that had somehow been corrupted.

Skype later automated the process of resolving the glitch with a Windows and (later) Mac updates.

Affected users were left without the service for the best part of a day.

The VoIP firm, acquired by Microsoft for $8.5bn last month, is far from a stranger to outages - a shortcoming in the service Redmond must focus on improving in order to make good on its investment. ®