Print this article  |  E-mail this article  |  Comment on this article

Skype Hit by Major Outage, Downloads Disabled

By BetaNews Staff, BetaNews

August 16, 2007, 11:05 AM

Skype suffered a major outage early Thursday morning in what is being characterized as a "software issue" related to users logging into the service. Engineers say it will take them 12 to 24 hours to fix the problem, and in the meantime have disabled all downloads of the Skype client.

The company, owned by eBay, has not specified what exactly caused the outage, but Skype has a strong history of reliability. It's possible there was some database corruption related to user logins, which could explain the lengthy time needed to repair the issue.

Add a Comment (10 Comments)

BetaNews reserves the right to remove any comment at any time for any reason. Please keep your responses appropriate and on topic. Foul language and personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Name (required):

E-mail (required):

Enter Your Comment:

By mersdad

edited Aug 17, 2007 - 5:46 PM

NSA

Score: 0

By Tutsumi

posted Aug 17, 2007 - 10:07 AM

http://heartbeat.skype.com/
"Where we are at 1100 GMT

By My status Villu Arak on August 17, 2007.

Hello all,

As Europe has woken up to a new day and Asia is entering the evening hours, here’s the latest on the sign-on problem.

We’re on the road to recovery. Skype is stabilizing, but this process may continue throughout the day.

An encouraging number of users can now use Skype once again. We know we’re not out of the woods yet, but we are in better shape now than we were yesterday.

Finally, we’d like to dispel a couple of theories that we are still hearing. Neither Wednesday’s planned maintenance of our web-based payment services nor any form of attack was related to the current sign-on issues in any way.

We’ll update you again as soon as we can. Thanks for hanging tight."

Score: 0

By PostDeals

posted Aug 16, 2007 - 8:40 PM

its technology its bound to fail thats what keep IT GUYS in business :)

Score: 0

By GS5

edited Aug 16, 2007 - 4:08 PM

I knew it wouldn't take long for e-bay to phuck things up:-) LMAO

Score: 0

By wincement

posted Aug 16, 2007 - 3:07 PM

Yeah, I still can't sign in right now, which stinks because, other than e-mail, skype is my only method of contact for some people I work with.

Score: 0

By wincement

posted Aug 16, 2007 - 11:23 PM

UPDATE:

I let Skype sit all day trying to connect, and it *just* got connected about 1 minute ago.

Score: 0

By tankist

posted Aug 16, 2007 - 2:46 PM

not sure if it is related but as of couple days already mine just refuses to start and kicks out "don't panic" message from skype.exe . uninstall/reinstall does not help. kinda vierd since i just reimaged my machine about 2 weeks ago...

Score: 0

By imafurby

posted Aug 16, 2007 - 1:00 PM

Worked for me just fine this morning, although sputtered a bit before it got going.

Score: 0

By Daddy_Spank

posted Aug 16, 2007 - 11:54 AM

I have not been able to log in for the last 12 hours

Score: 0

By rsx508

edited Aug 16, 2007 - 11:22 AM

Other than hurricanes, I can't recall a single major phone outage in my area in 44 years. Localized, sure. Car wrecks, tree limbs, lightning strikes. But entire area or citywide? Never. It seems service outages on the Internet are more common than that and rarely due to natural disasters. Mostly software or human error or DoS attacks. As much I dislike cable and telco providers, they seem to be way ahead on reliability of service.

Score: 0

Dec 4 - 11:47 AM ET The storm hits AT&T, with a five-digit headcount reduction

Dec 4 - 11:42 AM ET TV sports adopts Web coverage, plays with iPhones

Dec 4 - 11:24 AM ET Microsoft seeks 'community' help to make IE8 Standards Mode work out

Dec 4 - 10:43 AM ET Hitachi GST and Intel make a solid-state deal

Dec 3 - 11:36 PM ET Yahoo cedes Internet radio operations to CBS

Dec 3 - 5:54 PM ET Big BCS bowl game to land at CES 2009...in 3-D!

Dec 3 - 4:58 PM ET Songbird 1.0 music player makes a landing

Dec 3 - 3:41 PM ET Ted Rogers (1933-2008), giant of Canadian tech and media

Dec 3 - 2:27 PM ET Analysts: PC growth will slow, while notebooks remain a bright spot

Dec 3 - 1:58 PM ET RIM's third quarter outlook shouldn't shock, but does anyway