Skype crashing, possibly because of webcam use

I've been skyping my parents for years now and it's always worked fine until recently.

What started happening is that we'll be talking and I'll lose them for a few minutes, after which they'll explain to me that their computer (desktop PC (windows 7?)) started "making a lot of noise" before straight up crashing (black screen); after which they have to hit reset, restart the computer and reload Skype.

My mom actually had the idea to tu their camera off, and it stopped crashing after that.

It's worth noting that it had been crashing every 10-15 minutes over a 2 hour period that day (and pretty much the same for the last 3 or 4 conversations we'd had) and that after they tued their camera off it didn't crash a single time over another 2 hours.

Even if the cam is indeed linked to the problem somehow, I have no idea how. They've been using that same computer and same cam for the last few years to Skype.

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