I have been a major fan of Videolan ever since the 0.5.0 days and i have never before seen the need for any other videoplayer since none are as lean and mean as good ol' VLC.
Recently my 2.0.x (sadly i dont recall the exact version i was running, but it was a post 2.0 version and not the most recent one) install on my i7 machine with windows 7 Ultimate x64 has been agonizingly slow to load. Sadly i do not recall any major changes or updates that may have instigated the increased loading time, but i suspect the problem surfaced after a previous VLC version update since i usually allow VLC to update when asked. It used to start nearly instantly but only recently i started noticing the massively increased loading times.
I have timed it, and it now takes about 40 seconds for each instance of VLC to open. Opening VLC by running the application or by directly opening a file does not make any difference for the loading time. Granted, not much of a problem if you are starting one video sporadically, but if you have to verify a large number of files by opening them it renders the software quite unusable for this task.
I have searched the forums and the web for solutions, and have tried them all to no avail. I know this issue has been brought up a few times, but i have yet to determine the root of this problem and to find a proper solution to this. Here is what i have tried thusfar;
- I checked if 'Use media library' was enabled, but it was already disabled. After each reinstall i checked again to see if it was re-enabled but it has consistantly stayed disabled.
- I removed Malware Bytes Anti-Malware to no avail.
- I tried both disabling Windows Defender and adding an exception for the entire VLC program folder, but that too did not change loading times. Adding a program exception for VLC.exe did not change the situation either. There is no other resident AV scanner active on this machine and there were no scanners added or removed before the loading time problem surfaced.
- I uninstalled my current version (2.0.x) of VLC and reinstalled version 2.2.1. This did not change the loading time.
- I again uninstalled, this time checked the box to remove the cache, and reinstalled. Upon reinstall i again checked the remove cache option. VLC still takes 40 seconds to load.
- I then changed permissions on the VLC plugins folder to make the current user owner and assigned full control to the VLC plugins folder, replacing child object permissions. Again, VLC still takes 40 seconds to load.
- I did the same for the permissions on the entire 'VLC' program folder, again replacing child object permissions, but this too had no effect.
- I tried running the application with the 'Run as Administrator' (even though the current user had admin privileges). That did not have any effect.
- I changed the subtitle font to 'Courier New' to corrospond with the 'monospace font'. This did not affect loading times.
- I disabled the plugins cache altogether, VLC takes the same amount of time to load, but it also did not increase the loading time any further so i re-enabled the plugins cache.
- I checked Firefox for the VLC plugin (which i disabled during reinstall), but the mozilla config did not mention npvlc.dll anywhere.
- I renamed npvlc.dll in the VLC program folder to npvlc.dll.old , this too did not affect loading times.
Since i place the fullest confidence in the sturdiness of VLC as a long time user, i am confident that the problem is at my end. So i am sure i must be overlooking something. But as far as i can see i have tried all available options to combat this problem. Is there anything else that i could try to make VLC load near instantly (or at least within a few seconds) like before?
Thanks
