Skype Forces Microsoft Account on Windows 8 (8.1) – How to Sign in Without One!

This tutorial describes how to download and use Skype without a Microsoft Account – something the version of Skype pre-installed on later copies of Microsoft Windows doesn’t seem to allow.

We recently ordered and received some new machines at the Silicon Dales office, and, because clients often send us files in Microsoft formats, and we like to have familiarity with the latest Operating Systems our clients are likely to be using (and their idiosyncracies) for our conversations with them, one of the machines we’ve built has Windows 8 – Windows 8.1, to be precise – installed.

As our team regularly conferences with each other, and our clients, via Skype, we tried to get this setup on Windows 8.1. The pre-loaded “modern” Skype asked for a Microsoft account…

Who has one of those in our office? Nobody. So, what to do?

Simple! Install the “old” desktop client for Skype, which allows you to login with your Skype username and password.

You can download that from the following link:

http://www.skype.com/go/getskype-full

Once installed, you can get at this from the Windows 8.1 desktop (which looks remarkably like “old” Windows, and is therefore the best feature 😉 ) and use Skype as you were expecting, without being forced to sign up yet another account just to achieve one thing.

Leave a comment below if this helped you – of if you’re still unsure what to do to set this up…

3 thoughts on “Skype Forces Microsoft Account on Windows 8 (8.1) – How to Sign in Without One!”

  1. It is for this reason that we use Linux on our day-to-day machines… in case you are interested, we use Ubuntu. It is an entirely free OS, which allows us to do 99% of what can be achieved on Windows machines, including using Netflix , SkyGo and etc (tutorials on this website if you cannot work out how!!).

    Ubuntu Linux is open source, which means built by developers who aren’t generally being paid, but who share their knowledge and don’t install nag ware and ad ware by default. Essentially, you have to learn a bit about your OS, but this way, you don’t run into “oh, so now I need another username and password just to access something I had before…” every time it is decided for commercial reasons that it is necesary to “drive up monthly active users” or whatever.

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  2. Thanks for this AWESOME post. It was very helpful as of course the SKYPE and MS boards didn’t say this. Good work and thank you for the effort.

    Like the above comment from Robin Soctt on Ubuntu. I run Ubuntu on some computers and overall am very impressed on what they are doing. Definitely an alternative to Windows. Chrome, iOS worlds. I like it.

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