Okay, here goes. Recently, within the past month or so, I have had random "Bad file descriptor" errors pop up while trying to play video files over my local network. I have two desktops, the main one in my office, and a secondary in my bedroom. The secondary's only real purpose is so I can watch digital media in the bedroom. Both desktops are using wired connections to my router, a brand-new TP-Link Archer C7 v2. I have had the router since August, and as I said, this problem is only a month or so old. Both desktops are also running Windows 7 Ultimate x64. I have uninstalled and reinstalled VLC. I had been using the 3.0 nightly betas for the HEVC capability, but when this problem started happening I uninstalled the nightly and reinstalled the most recent stable version; I think it's 2.2.1 x64. However I did not do a clean install, as I had several custom settings that I wished to keep (Dynamic compressor, et. al.).
The strange thing is that, whenever I get one of these errors, I will switch over to the open Windows Homegroup window and instead of displaying the folder I had been in, it has reverted to the main Homegroup screen where it displays all the available PCs in the HG. So it seems like the network connection is resetting, or something. These errors are not reproducible; they are totally random. One will happen, I'll press Play in VLC without doing anything else, and the file will start back up, no problem. It may continue to the end with no further issues, or I may continue to get the errors until I give up in frustration and watch Netflix. Windows updates on both computers are current, and so is my router firmware. Malware scans come up negative for problems, as does a CHKDSK on the hard drive on which my media is stored (this hard drive is also relatively brand new, I purchased it in March - it's a WD Black if that makes any difference). These errors do not occur when playing the same files directly on the computer on which they are stored. I'm having trouble fixing this as I don't know what is causing it.