I am tearing my hair out and hoping someone can help. I have a Sony VAIO VPCZ137GX laptop with Windows 7 64-bit. System is about 5 months old. Was running like a dream until about 2-3 weeks ago. The problem is Skype. When I launch the program, the entire OS freezes. Sometimes it freezes right when the Skype welcome screen opens up. Sometimes Skype lets me sign in and then freezes the OS when I click the button to call someone (either audio only or video; it does not matter). It started after installing Service Pack 1, and I can only assume that the two are related. I have tried installing the very latest build of Skype (5.2). I also have tried installing Skype v3 and Skype v4. (In each instance, I did a clean install of the program, first uninstalling the existing version, and purging the registry of every key with mention of "Skype"). Nothing makes a difference. The OS still freezes. There is no mention of errors either in the Windows Events log or with error tracking in Skype. Ideas/suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.

Hi, Whether you encounter a BSOD, if so, I suggest to contact the CTS team for help, it is already beyond what we can do in this forum. If the application (Skype) hangs, you may try to boot in Clean Boot to determine whether the 3rd party add-ons or application cause this. Please follow the link below. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/331796 Also, you can use the Process Monitor to monitor the activity of the Skype. This will trouble-shooting this issue better. Thanks.Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

I do not get a BSOD. The entire system simply freezes, usually on the Skype sign-in screen, right after I enter my Skype name and password. It looks like some sort of video or audio driver conflict, since I imagine that these drivers are called at sign-in. I have re-installed (from the Sony website) all of the drivers the machine shipped with. Should I contact the CTS team for help? Skype says their software works fine with W7. Sony says it's not their problem, since system was working fine until SP1 was installed. It seems to be a problem with W7. Can MSFT help me with this? Multiple diagnositics have been run on the machine, and the problem is not hardware related. Is there a diagnostic utility that can be run to see if there was a problem with installation of SP1? The Event log is not reporting any errors associated with these freezes. Thanks for your help.