Anyone else having trouble with video Skype?

[DonJuane]

Try a full reboot prior to attempting Skype.

Skype, and in particular all browsers and all anti-virus software continue at a very rapid pace to slow down your system while claiming to take on the roll of "keeping you current with system updates", while in reality what they seem to be doing is to help carry out the hardware manufacturers' needs of "planned obsolescence". So think of all the software you use as eating away at your computer's resources, sometimes faster and sometimes slower but at least to a point you'll likely need to replace your computer with a new one every 3 years if you are a power user and 3-5 if you just browse websites. I always recommend updating with new hardware at least every 3 years and paying (e.g.) $350 rather than buying a $1000 computer and expecting it to last 6 years or longer. You always come out ahead if you go the "3-year rotating-replacement with the cheapest one that's not an absolute piece of junk" route.

Otherwise there are also your TSR programs that eat away at your system's resources and they have been with us since the days of DOS. Called "terminate and stay resident" because in the process of installing some program on your computer, what some of them may do automatically during the installation process is to additionally install a mini part of their program which isl automatically started each time your system is rebooted. They sometimes call it a "helper" or "fast start" or "rapid launch" and have many cute names for it but what these tiny pieces of the master program do is to section off a piece of your memory that can't be used easily by other programs and this soon slows the system down to intolerable levels. A good tech can go through your machine and remove all of these program stubs, fast-starts, helper or what ever you want to call them and your machine will run a hair faster for a little while. But just like city hall, you'll never beat them at their own game and if you want to continue to use the programs you depend upon, you'll have to upgrade your hardware to keep pace with the losing game.

Now regarding TSR stubs, if you are tech savvy you can download the free program "autoruns" and once it loads, then only the tab "Logon" and un-check anything that sounds like something you don't need. This can cause some software to fail if you uncheck the wrong thing. Key is to not mess with anything saying Intel, Microsoft or the name of your virus program. Things like Adobe programs or any program named here that is not needed to be running all the time, uncheck it. Of course a lot of the programs unless you can find the hidden setting to turn off the activity, they set their TSR stubs again to load at logon once they discovered you turned them off here, so they defeat you even if you know what they are doing. This situation sometimes requires help from a tech with very advanced skills and knowledge of modifications to the Windows registry, configuration files or other trickery.

!!! (Careful with "autoruns", as you can render your device unbootable; good to createo a system restore point before experimenting with all this so you can restore your system's registry if you encounter a sizable booboo on these configuration pages.)