There are several possible reasons why Skype may experience start-up failure.
The most common cause is that your system does not meet the minimum requirements of the latest Skype release. The minimum system requirements of Skype for Mac 5.0 are:
- 1GHz Intel processor.
- Mac OS X v10.5.8 (Leopard) or newer.
- 512 MB RAM.
- 100MB Free disk space.
You also need to have the latest version of QuickTime.
Another common issue is with the default text-to-speech voice on Mac OS X. Try changing the default text-to-speech voice as follows:
- In the menu bar, go to the Apple icon > System Preferences... The System Preferences window opens.
- In the System section, click Speech. The Speech pane opens.
- Go to Text to Speech and in the System Voice drop-down, select anything other than the current selection.
- Try to start Skype again.
