Problem installing Skype on Vista?

Getting error messages while installing Skype on Vista? A quick search on google shows there are many challenges to installing Skype on a Vista machine.

I tried installing Skype sometime ago on my 64-bit Vista OS machine, and it refused to install properly.  I since learnt that Skype works only with 32-bit Vista OS machines, and thus was able to install it on my 32-bit system without any problem.  This was in November 2008.  It was rather frustrating for me, as the download page promised that the installation would work for 64-bit Vista, but it didn’t.

Recently, a tweep was having trouble installing Skype on Vista. The error message encountered was “can’t create installation file…” I immediately responded thinking it was the 64-bit os problem again, and this time I was wrong.  It turns out Skype has released several new versions since last November, 5 to be exact.  The latest version at this time being 4.0.0.244.

As he had tried downloading and installing the latest version of Skype onto 2 vista machines to no avail, I suggested that he tried installing an older version instead.  I suspect  that Skype’s updates may have broken something which has somehow rendered the later version uninstallable on Vista.  I’m using 3.8.0.188 (released in Nov 2008) and it works fine for me.

He tried my suggestion, downloaded and installed the older version successfully.  So the Skype+Vista combi works for him now. 🙂  I’m very pleased  for him, and thought I’d put this note down as a reference for anyone else out there who may be experiencing the same challenge.

If you have a similar problem, have tried other solutions in vain and would like to try installing an older version, you can download them at this oldapps.com.  This web site has old versions of applications which can come in handy sometimes. Yup, newer is not always better.

I’ve notified Skype of this issue, so this will hopefully be an interim solution for those of you having this problem.