Skype for Business causes lag on computers

Question

Hi Community,

We do have the exact same problem/issue as described in the following question. As this question is locked, I hereby open a new one. I allowed myself to copy some sentences from the original question.

In our company, we have Skype for Business 2016 (32-bit MSO - 16.0.5056.1000) installed on different HP workstations and laptops with Windows 10 Enterprise 1809 - build 10.0.17763. We did some tests on Windows 10 Enterprise 1909 - build 18363.1198 but the issue is still present.

Sporadically some of the computers (regardless if the user works on a workstation/laptop or in the office or at home) will "freeze" or "hang up" or "lag". Window boxes come up blank and take 30+ seconds to populate and other functions of the computer are really slow too.

The only way to correct this is by rebooting the computer. A workaround is to disconnect one of the two/three monitors and reconnect them (in the Settings app, not physically). Then the computer works as expected until the issue occurs again.

The strange thing is that there are just some of the users affected by this problem. The computers are installed the same way (SCCM) and are very restricted (AppLocker). Hence users cannot install applications etc. - the computers are very "standard" but powerful. This issue starts always combined with a Skype for Business call - mostly (but not only) when placing an internal call to an RGS. As soon as the callee accepts the call, the caller's computer starts lagging.

Our used Skype for Business Server 2015 version is 6.0.9319.601 - KB5000675 but the issue occurred with older CUs as well. These "freezes" or "hangs" or "lags" (as described) are reoccurring ever since we upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10 in summer 2020. And even though SFB seems to be the issue, after many hours of troubleshooting we're pretty sure the real problem is at least not only SFB but more like a combination of events.

We have installed the newest drivers of the graphics card, disabled "Hardware Graphics Acceleration" in Office 2016, changed the power plan in Windows to maximum performance, upgraded graphics cards, recreated Skype for Business users, recreated Windows profiles, and upgraded RAM. There are no (obvious) errors in the Skype for Business logs and also event viewer doesn't show anything suspicious. Further, we disabled/uninstalled antivirus.

I'm posting this question in this forum as the in-depth log analysis with senior escalation engineers from Microsoft (incident) didn't show anything suspicious. We've tried nearly anything - without success. Does anyone of you experienced the same issues and may have a solution for that?

Thanks a lot in advance and best regards,
Maurice

Answer 1

@Suter Maurice ,

To eliminate whether the issue is caused by software conflicts, please try to perform a clean boot in the affected computer to check if it works.

If no luck, try to do a repair for the office application as well.

Besides, there is a Trace log folder for Skype for Business client: %userprofile% \AppData\Local\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Lync\Tracing. Then, open Snooper and parse the log file.

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Answer 2

We are having similar issues for two users as well. It seems to be tied to the users. A brand new computer with Skype for Business freshly installed has the same issue. We are running Dell XPS laptops with docks and external monitors.