Ubuntu freezes on receiving a Skype video call

Did you install any programs? Did you do a kernel update?
Also, you can try to start Skype from a terminal with the command

skype &> skype.log

And post the output here (if there is any). Does it work fine when you don't use the webcam? Which graphics card and driver do you use? Does the problem only occur when Skype tries to access the webcam or of any program tries to access the webcam, at all?

Hi Michel. You can also read a great community documentation (about Skype); https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SkypeTroubleshooting?highlight=%28\bCategoryAudio\b%29#Video_Problems . As you can see, there are two wiki pages, which may be helpful:

* Skype and webcams
* General page on webcams

Best regards.

Thanks fellows. I'm getting on it to get additional info. I'm really a Windows guy so please have patience with me. By the way, forgot to mention that chatting works just fine in Skype.
I need to find out how I can check which updates were made to my installation over the past number of weeks. I have my settings to automatically warn me when there are new updates and I usuall just click "go" to apply them.

Hi. Michel if you want to check which updates were made, I think the best place to search is '/var/log/apt/history.log' file. There is also one more valuable place: The Precise-changes list (https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/precise-changes/). It's very helpful, because you can find notes about all types of update - I mean 'precise-proposed', 'precise-security' and typical 'precise-updates'.

By the way; I'm also using 12.04 LTS Release but without Skype. Anyway, I think that Community webpages could be very helpful and that's fine, that chatting works okay.

Best regards.

I just tried "skype &> skype.log". Skype starts fine, then I video called myself from my wife's laptop and when I click to take the video call, Skype aborts and disappears. There is totally nothing in the skype.log file.

Hi. I think, that for now, you can check the Skype community web page (http://community.skype.com/?category.id=English) and maybe ask a question or even better - find a solution? Of course, you should not forget about the Skype Troubleshooting web page.

Best regards.

I thought I'd try to uninstall and re-install Skype so I went looking for what to do and found these terminal mode commands (on Google):

To uninstall: sudo apt-get autoremove -- purge skype
To re-install: sudo apt-add-repository "deb http://archive.canonical.com/ $(lsb_release -sc) partner"
                        sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install skype

After this remove and re-install video calls work again fine. I realize I did not really get to the bottom of the issue but at least I'm in business again. I reviewed all my updates made in previous weeks and realized there are so many I would never get a handle on which ones would have anything to do with this.

Thanks everyone who replied with helpful hints.