VLC running but not doing anything+Windows "open with" issue

[ShenziSixaxis]

So, last time I had an issue with VLC was just... everything, pretty much.
https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=113744

I said 'fine' with that and installed VLC Portable and that worked perfectly fine for me, as you'd expect from a media player. (BTW NOTHING 'fixed' my issue other than that, not resetting preferences or reinstalling or ANYTHING.) And then I took a break from watching an anime that I have in MKV format, and VLC Portable 1.1.5. ceased to do anything other than pop an image up for a moment and run two processes in the background (so basically everything it was doing before in the linked thread except not even a Direct 3D output window now). Deleted that, installed the updated 2.1.0. version. Same issue. Even installed the full version/nonportable of VLC x32. Same bloody issue.

Now, problem is with either Portable, Windows won't accept the executable in the 'open with' window thing. I can navigate to it and try to select it, but it isn't added to the window with the list of programs. With the nonportable VLC, I can do that, despite having downloaded the vlc-2.1.0-win64.7z and extracted it to my desktop, so it's "installed" in the same exact way. (Same thing happened with the version with an installer.)

I'm pretty sure that it wouldn't matter if the portable versions were being accepted by Windows. Seeing as the nonportable version does nothing but eat resources, I'm pretty sure the portables would do exactly the same thing.

So, uh. What... even... I'm not even sure what to think about trying anymore. I have never had so many issues with VLC, or even flat out this many issues with a media player in general. I just want the thing to work or a decent alternative.

[EZS]

I'm having the same exact issue, before I updated to 2.1.0 it worked perfectly and now it just wouldn't launch VLC from "open with"....

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

You could try to fix the registry