Hi, I have been using Skype Portable for a few months - great app, thanks very much to you guys for making this available. I have a question on its behavior on Windows 7: My implementation is a set up with a shortcut on my Windows 7 taskbar from which I would launch the program. This was associated to the skypeportable.exe file in my directory on my removable drive that I would take between the three computers I regularly use. So on each I have a shortcut on the taskbar, which I would click to launch the program. One thing I did notice is that each time I'd move the removable drive, I'd have to reenter the skype password the first time I'd launch after the removable drive had been on another computer. If I close skype and then relaunch on the same computer, no password was necessary. I assume this had to do with some part of the app that had to reside locally, but I would have liked to be able to bypass the password entry each time. Small issue however.
I'm posting here now because I ran upon a more cumbersome issue today. I Just replaced one of my computers, and set it up the same way with the an icon on my taskbar pointing to skypeportable.exe. For some reason during the third or fourth time I used skype on this computer, during a launch I noticed the computer installed skype itself. Now, when I launch from skypeportable.exe, a second icon opens on the taskbar. The problem with this is that I can't close the actual skype itself from the taskbar. This means that I lost one of the best aspects of the app up till now, which was that I could close out the actual skype program, which would run in the background on the taskbar on the right-hand side. As a result, when I got a new IM from a contact, if I clicked on the orange skype icon on the main taskbar, I went straight to the IM's window. With Skype itself there now, when I click on the skype Icon, I have to then do an extra intermediary click with the mouse to choose the new IM window because skype itself is also there. I tried to close skype itself via the "x" in the window, but unlike before, this simply minimizes skype but keeps it open. I also noticed that now when I use skype portable, a new icon opens on the right of my taskbar's other icons, wheras before, the open versions of skype would "layer" on top of the existing icon that was pinned to the taskbar that pointed to skypeportable.exe which I used to launch the program.
Any help would be greatly appreciated as I'd love to get back to the previous set up which was truly a very efficient way to use skype for IM'ing out of Windows 7
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Skype itself shows on the taskbar under Windows 7. There is no way to disable this behavior. Nor is there a way to combine this with pinning SkypePortable.exe.
You should not 'pin' portable apps while they are running under Windows 7 as it won't work right... you wind up pinning the app inside the portable app. Once you do that, things get messy.
Windows 7 simply doesn't properly support multi-exe apps.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Hi John,
And thanks for responding so quickly. I understand your point. What I'm trying to do is recreate the situation I had before where I'd only pinned a shortcut to the file skypeportable.com. Specifically, I did this via right-clicking on the file from its location on my removeable drive and selecting "pin to taskbar" Then, I would click the skype portable shortcut to start the app. What I wasn't doing was trying to pin the app once it was running and had emerged in the taskbar as all apps running under windows 7. I hope that makes sense. So my point is that I'd tried to pin just a shortcut to launch the program.
At any rate, what I was hoping to do was recreate the behavior I had before when I could close out the actual skype main window, which would not be on the taskbar at all, so I presume this means it had somehow gotten minimized to the skype "green check box" icon that was visible on the right side of the taskbar under the "up arrow" (sorry, don't know how else to describe this icon) that shows other programs running on start up.
So again, just in the interest of trying to provide as many details as possible, I had previously this situation:
- Skype logo on main taskbar, pinned from "skypeportable.exe" file on my removeable drive
- upon clicking this icon, skype would show up in the right side of task bar along with other programs running in the background
- ability to close out / minimize main skype window, leaving a situation in which on the windows taskbar I would see only one skype logo "flat" with no multiple windows running
- upon receiving an IM from a contact, just that contact's IM window would appear in orange on the taskbar. When clicking that, Windows would pop up that IM window directly with no need to choose between that and skype itself's window
Current situation:
- Upon launch, a new skype logo shows up on the taskbar on the right. This leaves a net situation of the "launch" skype logo which points to "skypeportable.exe" on the left still, with no "layers".
- Skype is still visble in the right taskbar as a program running
- If an IM window from a contact is opened, it is added as a later on the already-running skype program window on the taskbar.
- When trying to close the skype window itself via the "x" in the right corner, this action only minimizes the window, and does not close it
- The new skype icon that opens in the taskbar has all the various skype options when right-clicked. Previously these options were not visible on this part of the task bar as the open instances of skype all "layered" over the icon that pointed to skypeportable.exe only.
Thanks again for your input, much appreciated.
Using Transcend 128 GB SSD drive
Skype has its own independent taskbar icon that CAN NOT be disabled and is always visible even with no Skype windows shown. This behavior was just introduced within *Skype itself* and only affects Windows 7. Whenever skype is running, you WILL have a taskbar icon. Said icon can't be combined with or shown as layered to the icon you created for SkypePortable.exe.
The ONLY way to go back to your previous behavior is to install an older version of Skype, which we do not make available.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Hey John, thanks again for your time.
Indeed when I had the situation that Skype started to install itself, and unfortunately I'm not sure why this had happened as I hadn't updated to the newly released skype portable yet, the new version of skype installed and thus it appears I am now using the new version as you described and cannot get the previous behaviour without the older version.
Out of curiousity, do you know what caused the update yesterday that happened? Was it connected with your release of the new version of skype portable? I had noticed that since I started using skype portable in November, no instance of skype itself loaded on my computer, which I assume resulted from the way skype portable was designed. Does skype portable remotely access skype, and was it due to an update of skype itself that my skype portable suddenly lauched the update of skype itself on my computer?
Thanks again and regardless of this inconvenience, kudos to you guys for making this app available
Using Transcend 128 GB SSD drive
You can run Skype in compatibility mode for Windows XP SP3 which puts the icon for skype in the system tray like it did in XP. This also works for non-portable apps like messenger, which puts an icon on the taskbar.