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Dave Child
Asked: 2014-01-16 00:59:54 +0800 CST

What happened to Skype's wav files?

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Skype has been working fine for a fair while, but has (in the last week or so) stopped making notification sounds. Normal audio for calls is fine, but the ringtone and other alerts are now not making any noise at all.

The cause appears to be that the wav files are all missing.

Skype Hates Me

I've not deleted them - at least, not knowingly - and not made any changes within Skype. I ran an update and upgrade to my whole system recently, so the cause is likely there, but I have no idea where to start looking to sort this out.

Is it just going to be simplest to download the sound files and set them all manually, or is this a known issue with another fix?

Edit: Forgot to say - the sound files are normally (I believe) in /usr/share/skype/sounds, but I don't have a /usr/share/skype folder at all.

sound

2 Answers

  1. The .wav files are from the skype-bin package.

    You may try to reinstall that package:

    sudo apt-get install --reinstall skype-bin

    I have the .wav files at the following locations, Ubuntu 13.04:

    /usr/share/skype/sounds/CallBusy.wav
/usr/share/skype/sounds/CallConnecting.wav
/usr/share/skype/sounds/CallFailed.wav
/usr/share/skype/sounds/CallHangup.wav
/usr/share/skype/sounds/CallHold.wav
/usr/share/skype/sounds/CallRemoteHangup.wav
/usr/share/skype/sounds/CallResume.wav
/usr/share/skype/sounds/CallRingingIn.wav
/usr/share/skype/sounds/CallRingingOut.wav
/usr/share/skype/sounds/ChatIncoming.wav
/usr/share/skype/sounds/ChatIncomingInitial.wav
/usr/share/skype/sounds/ChatOutgoing.wav
/usr/share/skype/sounds/ContactAdded.wav
/usr/share/skype/sounds/ContactAuthRequest.wav
/usr/share/skype/sounds/ContactOffline.wav
/usr/share/skype/sounds/ContactOnline.wav
/usr/share/skype/sounds/SkypeLogin.wav
/usr/share/skype/sounds/SkypeLogout.wav
/usr/share/skype/sounds/TransferComplete.wav
/usr/share/skype/sounds/TransferFailed.wav
/usr/share/skype/sounds/TransferRequest.wav
/usr/share/skype/sounds/VoicemailReceived.wav
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  2. Best Answer

    Since /usr/share/skype is gone, and this is a systemwide folder created by installing Skype, that suggests reinstalling Skype might work. (Note that this will likely work even though resetting your user-specific Skype settings did not, as resetting your personal Skype settings doesn't affect anything in /usr.)

    Assuming you installed Skype from the partner repository (for example, in the Software Center), running these commands in a Terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) will reinstall it:

    sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get --purge --reinstall install skype skype-bin

    [I've edited this to include purging and reinstalling the skype-bin support package as well, which may be necessary, as described in minerz029's excellent answer.]

    Assuming all that's wrong is the missing /usr/share/skype folder, a weaker form of reinstalling (which doesn't clear out systemwide configuration files) can be achieved by leaving out the --purge flag or by going into the Software Center, removing Skype, and installing it again.

    If you installed Skype in some other way, you should tell us how; depending on how you installed it, it may or may not be expected for a /usr/share/skype folder to exist, and the inaccessibility of those files could be a file ownership/permissions problem.

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