Problems with the Sky Go App on Windows 10

Jon Weaver

Distinguished Member
Joined
Aug 16, 2000
Messages
6,329
Reaction score
774
Points
1,405
Age
54
Location
Born in Bristol but now in Newport, (for my sins)
I never thought of using Sky Go under Windows before, as I had a Slingbox which performed well.

But when I moved house, Sky Go was the only way I could watch Sky and I was quite impressed.. I used it for a few weeks and don't remember a single problem.

Whether it was the install of SkyQ or an upgraded version which was forced on me, Sky Go now is a nightmare as I have 2 constantly re-occuring problems.


1. Constant "something is wrong. App will now Quit" errors when adverts are playing.. They appear as soon as the adverts start and if I ignore them they have little effect.. But they gradually build up on my task bar.. I put it down to Network issue at first as when I fixed them the issue stopped.. But its come back again and the network is fine.. I don't get a single error when a 'show' is playing, but the moment a forced advert starts, they pop up approx every 10 seconds.

2. App sometimes HARD crashes when I start to watch something.. Its a lottery as 1 in 5 times I start to play something I get a black screen with the loading circle in the middle and my PC freezes.. I can leave my PC running for months if not years and use Sleep/Hibernate and its 100% reliable with no crashes.. But since this started with SkyGo I am doing forced restarts almost every day.. Not only is it scary having to do an unplanned reboot.. I can't tell you how much work I have lost with due to unsaved files being closed.


Does anyone have any idea how I can get help from Sky to get these reported.. I literally have no way to use Sky Go now on my PC as its too unstable, and the crashing is causing me to loose work constantly...

jon
 
Have you tried a different browser or another PC?
 
I have put it on my work PC and it doesn't appear to have the problem.. So its almost certainly my PC.. But how? I run many apps and its the most stable its ever been and never crashes..

What do you mean by "Browser"? The Sky Go app doesn't use a browser, does it?
 
I am using the SkyGo app.. i didnt even know it was possible to watch via a browser…i cant even find a link as everything points to download the app.

I will have a look around tomorrow.. hopefully this will resolve the issues i am having.
 
I believe Sky Go only works through the Windows Sky Go app on a PC these days. When Sky Go was accessible via a browser it required Microsoft Silverlight but that was discontinued a few years ago.

As for your issues with the app, unfortunately I am unable to help as I haven't used it in years. I gave up on it as it would be so troublesome for me, crashing, picture freezing, sound in sync issues, error messages etc., however I would have expected Sky to have addressed those issues by now as this was several years ago.
 
Are you sure SkyGo works in a Browser? I am finding posts from 10 years ago talking about it.. But all I can find now is an App....
Yes, did you read the link I gave re the Opera browser?
 
Yes, did you read the link I gave re the Opera browser?
Yes.. I did read it, but it just shows which browers work best. It comes across as an advert for Browers, rather than a way to actually watch sky. If you follow the "guide" for Opera, it doesn't actually tell you HOW to watch (i.e there is no actual link to a SkyGo website).

The URL is (was) "www.skygo.com" but it just takes you to the App download...
 
As the app works fine with other win10 installations I would suggest it is something on your home pc version that is causing this issue.
I trust you've tried uninstall and reinstall and if you've any third party antivirus try disabling it before running Skygo.
You could also try an alternative uninstaller to completely remove Skygo, as add and remove may not delete all the registry entries.
Make sure your version of win10 is up to date with all patches, as should be any vga device drivers..
 
100% my PC.. But in this day and age, no app should cause a PC to simply freeze.

I use my PC for with some really obscure apps and nothing crashes, EVER..

Windows is 100% up to date as are my graphics drivers.

I have uninstalled SkyGO many times (and cleaned out the SkyGo and Videoguard folders from 'appdata')... And I only have Windows Firewalls and Antivirus, so I can't see its that.

I have also run with a totally clean boot (i.e no other apps running), so I am at a loss as to what it could be.
 
I guess also you've checked the events logs to see if there's any clues in there, run disc checking and memcheck also. Just because nothing else crashes isn't really an answer because different software can access different areas of the disc and memory. Do you get any bluescreens? Win10 also has some trouble shooters you can run. Are the adverts you refer to for Sky programs, as that's all I get and there isn't any others I recall. Have you disconnected Skygo from your SkyQ box within the app settings?
 
No bluescreens.. EVER... Nothing in the event log... No clue at all.

This happens with or without SkyQ on the network... And when I say adverts its only PRODUCTS.. Not the Sky adds.. So for example, when that awful Samsung advert runs, I get the pop up every 10 seconds or so... But when Sky are advertising a new series, or something on Sky (i.e Discovery+) I don't get it.

This makes me think is some kind of privacy thing, or analytics.. But I have changed my Security settings to 'open'.. Disabled the firewall.. And deselected the Privacy settings in the SkyGo app.

So I have no idea...

As for the crash, I literally have no where to start looking....

I have logged a fault with Sky and they will look into it.. I notice there is a "log" folder under the SkyGo directory, so I assume they can enable logging.. So I am hoping that there will be a way to do this...
 
I never found the PC app very good - a real CPU hog and often pauses/buffers (and this is with both sky q box and pc on wired network, and the PC doing nothing else). The android app has been great though (and probably the thing I'll miss most about cancelling :D)
 
its a rea
I never found the PC app very good - a real CPU hog and often pauses/buffers (and this is with both sky q box and pc on wired network, and the PC doing nothing else). The android app has been great though (and probably the thing I'll miss most about cancelling :D)
Its a real shame.. I used to use my Slingbox to watch TV in the office... But as I was moving I wanted to look for something else and SkyGo seemed ideal.. And it served me well for a few weeks until this started.

I don't know if it came about at a certain release.. But it was fine up to a point..

And now I can't really trust it as having to reboot the PC is unthinkable....

Now I have the wired Ethernet up and running in the house, i now wonder if I should think about using the Slingbox again.. But of course there are no analogue outputs on SkyQ unless i take the feed from the Minis, so its not going to be as easy as it was..
 
I never found the PC app very good - a real CPU hog and often pauses/buffers (and this is with both sky q box and pc on wired network, and the PC doing nothing else). The android app has been great though (and probably the thing I'll miss most about cancelling :D)
I've not experienced any issues myself that concerned me and I've watched a day of F1 testing last year, or other streaming products on Skgo more recently whilst doing my stuff as a remote techie during lockdown..
 
The problem I had with errors during ads stopped overnight.. I didn't do anything.. Nothing changed.. But one minute I was getting the errors... Next minute I didn't, and havn't had any since.

However, that was my least worrying problem as the random "crash" still happens.. So much so I can't trust it any more.

I checked the Event logs just before the Crash and it showed nothing.. .So now my only hope is downloading everything I watch first and not using it to stream..

I still get the black screen and spinning circle before playback.. But so far, it hasn't crashed.....

Its not ideal, but I could use it this way.. I just have to remember to never press the "play" button on something not downloaded as there is a 20% chance it will crash my PC.
 
Have you tested anything else I suggested?
 
Disk check and Memory check show no errors...

I don't know of any troubleshooting tools, as most of the 3rd party ones are just spam..

I get this with or without SkyQ connected..

I have made some progress.. When my PC locks up, I was surprised I could still ping it.. So I have enabled OpenSSL and true enough, even though its frozen, I can get into it at a command line level.

I then use the "tasklist" command and can see all the tasks running.. But when I try and kill them (taskkill /F /PID xxxx) they don't shut down.

I then tried a "shutdown -f -S" but it doesn't shut down.. So its not actually frozen.. Its just that the OS or Kernel has hung...

I know its drastic, but I am now going to uninstall some apps that I don't use in the hope I can find something which is clashing....
 
I am on a mission now.. I have just uninstalled many (too many) apps.. Re-tested and it crashed again.

Then I rebooted and this time killed every process which I could find relating to background applications (i.e Teamviewer, Trueimage, etc)..

I was literally running with nothing running.. not a thing...

So I don't think I am ever going to fix this.. The last test I have to do is quitting SkyGo after every program......

Looks like I might have to go back to my Slingbox.. Just a shame that I just deinstalled the application in my test!
 
I did spot ONE thing.. And that was the Firefox was always running when the crash happened.. And I realised why.. If I miss the close X during the ads, it launches a webpage for the product... So during my tests, even though I tried to keep everything closed, Firefox kept popping up.

So I just spent an hour launching random shows checking that Firefox was closed between each... And I must have done 100 without a single problem... So i stopped.. Did something else.. Came back.. Carried on my tests (Firefox still closed) and it crashed on my 5th attempt.

There is literally no difference between each test.. Its random, but odd it was stable for around 100 goes.....

My last throw of the dice is to close SkyGo after every show... It will be a pain to do this in general use, but better than a crash....

Edit: Nope.. not sleep.. After a reboot, I repeated my tests and just launched things back to back.. After 5 it crashed... So there is nothing more I can do here now.. .I am gutted to be honest, as this is so much better than my Slingbox, but having it crash my entire PC makes it unusable.
 
Last edited:
I woke up in the night.. And it hit me... There is a perhaps difference between what I am doing and many others.. I use automatic sleep...

Yesterday I must have launched 100+ shows in succession without a crash... But then I went away and came back and the crash happened on the 2nd thing I played... The only thing that I would have happened between test was that my PC automatically went to sleep.

I am thinking that SkyGo doesn't like to be put to sleep... I am now going to do some tests to see if I can confirm this..... But for now, I am testing with restarting the app before playing anything and havn't had a crash....
 

The latest video from AVForums

TV Buying Guide - Which TV Is Best For You?
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Back
Top Bottom