Loading folder shortucts no longer possible.

[phychotron]

I have a folder with various shortcuts in it. That folder gets loaded onto my taskbar as a toolbar. I've always been able to just drag and drop the Movies folder shortcut into VLC and it would load all the movies.

I just reinstalled Windows 7, VLC and other programs. Now when I try and drag that shortcut into VLC the playlist merely loads the shortcut.lnk and won't read the files.

I used the same Windows disc and the latest version of VLC. This is very annoying because now I have to open the drive, find the folder and drag it into VLC. And because the drive is almost full it can take a few seconds to load the drive contents.

Anyone know how to solve this problem?

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

VLC was never able to open .lnk files.

[phychotron]

Not true. Maybe it was windows feeding it the files, but it DID open the shortcut to my movies folder.

[phychotron]

After the reinstall of windows I even tried the EXACT same shortcut that was working prior to the reinstall, it no longer worked and new shortcuts don't do it either.

[phychotron]

While trying to figure this out I found another thread talking about loading a folder directly to VLC. So instead of trying to figure out how it was possible (for at least 3 years and through a previous windows reinstall) I just have the shortcut to VLC that loads the movie folder directly to the player. Its actually easier and faster than having to load VLC then drag and drop.

https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=105800

It is possible using 'symbolic links' using the Link Shell Extension, but I never had to do anything fancy in the past, It just took a normal shortcut at the time. It probably had something to do with maybe some third party software or a bug in windows. It may also have something to do with how my Windows Libraries are set up, but I'm trying to fiddle with it and no luck yet.

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Sorry but VLC was never able to open .lnk files. This is a 6 years old feature request even: https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/3021

[phychotron]

Well like I'm saying there are ways to make a shortcut appear to be a regular folder. I'm not sure how it happened on my system, but it DID happen. I know for a fact that I put a shortcut to "F:/Movies" in a folder: C:\shortcuts that was loaded on the taskbar as a toolbar. Somehow I was able to just drag and drop the Movies folder from that toolbar. Up until two days ago it worked. After I reinstalled windows (w/out formating C:) I used the exact same C:\shortcuts on the taskbar but it would not load.

The only alternative I can do is use the hard drive as a toolbar and the movie folder will drag over. I'll let you know if I figure out what caused this. Its strange cause I know I've tried adding shortcuts to media players before without success, not sure what was different here.

I like loading the folder directly into VLC via the VLC shortcut, but my only issue is that it doesn't occupy the same icon on the taskbar as the pinned VLC --its like running a second instance without the first one running.