Everytime I use Skype, I have to restart the program. In other
words, the first time I use Skype, everything is fine. When I
make a second call, I get an error message saying

problem with sound device

And I end up quiting Skype and restarting Skype again.
What is happening? Fyi, I'm using version

1.2.0.17_API

on Mandriva 2006.

Any tip would be appreciated.

Sheng-Chieh

I had a very similar problem with the last couple of beta releases. If I would leave Skype up and running after I finished a phone call Skype would cause my system(Debian Sid) to hang for up to 5 minutes if I attempted to make another call without restarting Skype.

I just bought a Logitech usb headset and set up Skype to use the headset as the sound device. It stopped all those problems. I can now leave Skype up indefinitely after I finish a call and it doesn't hang when I make the next call.

I can't prove the following but based on the above experience here is what I think is happening. When a person finishes a call Skype will release the sound card to whatever program needs it, but when Skype needs the audio device again it hangs because it is having a conflict with whatever program is currently using the sound device, or it hangs because it can't simply can't re-acquire the sound card after it releases it. It's speculation on my part, but seems pretty logical to me as the problem of having to restart between calls vanished when Skype was given its own dedicated sound device.

Delete or rename the file "hangup.wav" from the skype/sound directory. That cleared up "second-call" issues on my Slackware system with the 1.2.x clients.