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Typing 'http://:' Into a Skype Message Trashes the Installation Beyond Repair
An anonymous reader writes: A thread at the Skype community forums has brought to light a critical bug in Microsoft's Skype clients for Windows, iOS and Android: typing the incorrect URL initiator http://: into a text message on Skype will crash the client so badly that it can only be repaired by installing an older version and awaiting a fix from Microsoft. The bug does not affect OS X or the 'Metro'-style Windows clients — which means, effectively, that Mac users could kill the Skype installations on other platforms just by sending an eight-character message.
http://community.skype.com/t5/Windows-desktop-client/Skype-Fix-for-crashes-caused-by-bad-URL/td-p/3997463
I'm not even sure I've heard of an error condition which required a full uninstall.
I can guess why and I doubt an uninstall would help.
All you really need to know is that Skype saves conversations and redisplays them when it starts. So you send someone http://:, that triggers the bug, and on restart, it reloads the conversation and crashes again.
If that's the case, a reinstall won't help, because Skype will just re-download the missed messages and reencounter the bad URL and reenter the crash loop.
(Presumably the bug is that they see the second ":", decide it's the start of a port, and leave the hostname uninitialized, causing a crash.)
Isn't the history stored on their server? In that case you're SOL.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Yep.
First thing a new installation of Skype does is download every single message you've received for the past several months, I think.
I haven't tried deleting a history file (they're actually SQLite databases) but I think the same thing happens in that case: Skype sees that it isn't up to date on messages and redownloads them.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.