After pulling my hair out for a while, I discovered that the Skype client needs to be run as a user with administrative privileges (I’m using version 4.x). I don’t see why this is necessary, but oh well, I’ll live. I’m not happy with Skype as I’d rather not have to run my applications with admin privileges.
While some security experts will disagree with me on this, I’d rather run my account with lower security privileges to at least ‘sandbox’ my account somewhat and prevent (at least some) malicious processes from getting away with too much. My user account is a member of the Power Users group.
If I need to perform functions requiring administrative capabilities, then I can either use the built-in Windows function ‘runas‘, or in most cases I use Sudowin (very much like the *nix sudo command). Sudowin works a bit differently than runas in that the application runs as me, but with administrative privileges.
The most interesting thing about running without being in the admin group is how little I actually ever need to use runas or Sudowin. If you’re in IT, don’t let your users tell you otherwise!