I realize that this might be a tough one but I thought I'll try nonetheless for there are many knowledgeable people here.
Skype recently shipped out an update which automatically installed a games application called EasyBits GO. I didn't want it, so when it first opened and asked for something (I don't remember what it was) I just closed it by clicking the titlebar X. After that, for some reason, Skype failed to work.
I think I noticed it on the next reboot: it just wasn't there even though I have it set to autostart. So, I started Skype manually. It showed the "Connecting..." screen for a few seconds, then suddenly crashed with a Windows messagebox telling me:
Skype has stopped working.
Windows is checking for a solution to the problem …
I closed, uninstalled EasyBits Go, uninstalled Skype, reinstalled Skype, same thing. I closed again, uninstalled Skype, deleted all Skype, Skype Extras and SkypePM folders from my user folder\AppData\Roaming and C:\ProgramData, cleaned my Registry with Eusing Free Registry Cleaner, rebooted and reinstalled Skype. Same crash on login!
I uninstalled Skype again, then restored the deleted stuff from the AppData folders and installed Skype 4.2. It works flawlessly and has even preserved my message logs. I tried to do an automatic update -- update works, Skype still crashes on login, so rollback to 4.2 again. Now it seems I'm stuck with this old version.
Are there any more steps I could take to get version 5 going again? Any ideas what could even cause this?