"Play" shortcuts with VLC 2.0.5

[humpalumpa]

I like to just drag'n'drop file shortcuts into VLC - not shortcuts to whole folders, but instead just to one video file. That always worked fine for me; but since I updated to 2.0.5 yesterday, it won't anymore - it tries to play the shortcut file and fails, instead of trying to play the file the shortcut links to. Before, I had no problem with this, and was doing it all the time - was the feature removed? Did I mess up some setting or something? Can I restore that behavior to the current version of the player?

EDIT: Similar to this, when I try to open a shortcut file through the "Open file..." menu option, the whole player just crashes. That shouldn't happen either, right?

[Lotesdelere]

Reset the preferences.
If it doesn't help then I'm afraid something went wrong on your system.

[df30]

It's funny because playing shortcuts isn't supported by any version prior to 2.1.0, at least on my system (XP SP3 x32).
I can't use 2.1.0+ so I would like to have this function with 2.0.8.
As implied by this thread it should work already with 2.0.5? But how? I just doesn't work for me.
I have tested clean installs of the versions from 2.0.0 to 2.0.8 everytime with old settings deleted.
Is there a trick or a special setting in windows necessary for it to work?