Dangerous installation

[loveclose]

I've come here not to rant, but for advice and maybe to make aware issues that have occured to my pc this evening after downloading the VLC media player which I came across by accident whilst surfing.

I installed the software, and with it came a secondary toolbar which had a VLC logo attached to it.

All was well, until I tried to access the Control Panel. All I got was a message saying 'Windows Explorer has stopped working', then 'Windows Explorer will restart', then the window closed back to my desktop. In other words, all access to the control panel was completely scuppered!!

Exactly the same thing happened with the following desktop and Windows icons:

My documents
My pictures
Music

By this time, I knew I was in trouble. I couldn't uninstall what I'd just installed, and I was unable to back up any non-backed up files as I couldn't access any drives or files.

Now it may seem unruly with the first post here to come on and moan - but it was the installation of the VLC media player that started the trouble. I have since managed to find another way round to get into 'System Restore' - thankfully the system restore software worked, and everything is working as it should, but the VLC player has been removed by the restore programme.

It may be that the third part who provided this software is to blame - and unfortunately I have no idea which site I downloaded it from, so I can't say for sure if it was the VLC player on it's own that caused the problem, or some other software included with the download that was the culprit. All I know is that I would have had no access to the documents or workings of the pc with the software still installed.

I'm interested in teh VLC media player - but am reluctant to reinstall for reaons that are obvious.

My point in posting:

1) Can anyone enlighten me as to why my Windows system (Vista) was so altered by this download
2) Has anyone else experienced anything similar?
3) Does the player work with Vista? (I'm happy to check that here as well....)
4) Would installing the player from this site be safer?

Many thanks - and sorry that my first post is so negative, but you can understand the issues here and thought I'd come straight to those that are in the know for any help or answers.

[loveclose]

Update:

On the recommendation of a few trusted friends, I installed VLC direct from the site and encountered none of the previous problems.

Clearly the fault must then lie with the 3rd party provider.

I'm pleased that the software is installed and working just fine, but a little relieved that the disasterous installation that happened before was not repeated!

I'd still like to know if anyone else has had similar problems, or whether this sort of thing just happens all the time. Whatever the case, the exerience this evening from the third party site was just awful, and for a while I was struggling to get my pc restored.

[blunderbuss]

Hi loveclose.. don't have a solution for you, maybe you downloaded from a dubious site 'cos did'nt have your problems.. should be fine to download from here though..
Have my own issue with vlc, since installing a couple of days ago, when I defrag'd it came up "some files cannot be defragmented" and I'm wondering if this is down to vlc's cache.. hopefully if someone answers you they might answer me too..
One last thing.. vista is terrible..everybody hates it, you might be better off going to windows website and downgrading to xp (or upgrading to 7, if you can afford it and your machine has good enough specs.)

[loveclose]

The download direct from this site was just fine thanks - I am sure that the third party site attached other bits and pieces which didn't want to be uninstalled. I've chatted with a couple of mates over the weekend over this, and they weren't over surprised that I'd had problems - one had almost identical trouble accessing files and control panel and computer drives......

Interestingly enough, I've never had a moment's bother with Vista. I know a lot of folk don't like it, but since 1st installation, it's never crashed on me once. I had numerous problems upgrading XP with the SP service upgrades.....My trouble and strife has a laptop with 7 on it and that's been pretty solid too, so I'd go up to 7 when I need to.

Nice when you have a system that you can rely on!