crash on start: faulting module libmmdevice_plugin.dll

[space_time]

Hi, I've had VLC x64 installed and working for a couple of years. I do a lot of video playback work with it, until now anyway. Windows 11 with all the latest updates, on a Dell 7730 laptop with an Nvidia chip. Two days ago I made a mistake and downloaded/installed the 32 bit VLC version rather than 64 bit when trying to upgrade to the latest version of VLC. VLC starting crashing immediately on trying to start it, never does show itself. From the Windows Event Application Log the crash says "Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe Faulting module path: C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\plugins\audio_output\libmmdevice_plugin.dll"

I tried uninstalling VLC with Revo Uninstaller, then downloading the correct x64 version of VLC. Same thing. Immediate crash on start. Did it again, uninstall with Revo, reboot, re-install VLC x64. Same, crash on start. Then another idea, since that dll error message seems to be mentioning a plugin. I uninstalled with Revo again, rebooted again, re-installed VLC x64, but this time unchecked everything but creating the desktop and start menu icons. Unchecked all the boxes to bind VLC to the various audio and video extensions and to add VLC to the right click menus. No effect. Still immediate crash on start. I've googled libmmdevice_plugin.dll but no clues come up.

Any ideas on what is going on and/or what I did to cause this? A wild, uneducated, guess that maybe the x32 VLC version installed a x32 version of that libmmdevice_plugin.dll somewhere that isn't playing well with the x64 VLC and isn't uninstalling. Ha just my best guess at matching the error report up with what I did.

Here is more of the Windows Event Log dump:

Faulting application name: vlc.exe, version: 3.0.21.0, time stamp: 0xa6d0a6c0
Faulting module name: libmmdevice_plugin.dll, version: 3.0.21.0, time stamp: 0x00310032
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x0000000000004427
Faulting process id: 0x0x45B0
Faulting application start time: 0x0x1DB26FE88D0AD2D
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\plugins\audio_output\libmmdevice_plugin.dll
Report Id: 49f068a7-efa1-48d1-9e7e-3dcc4d65ee87
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:

Thanks in advance!

[Lotesdelere]

First, reboot your computer.
Reset the preferences and cache (the manual way):
https://wiki.videolan.org/VSG:ResetPrefs
Uninstall VLC, both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.
Then delete the whole C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\ folder if it's still exists, and also C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC\ for the 32-bit version. Check both folders anyway.
Also delete the whole %APPDATA%\vlc\ folder.

Once done, reboot again and reinstall the latest version of VLC, v3.0.21 as of today.

[space_time]

That worked! Whew! VLC is working again. Thank you very much, lotesdelere! I had been a sad guy the last 2 days, relegated to using Windows Media Player.

I hadn't even noticed the "reset preference and cache files" in the program folder. Good to know! I did the manual delete on the VLC folder in APPDATA too.

And FWIW, typo on my part, the crashes-on-start were happening on a Dell XPS 8930 with an Nvidia card. I did the forum post on my Dell 7730 with a remote desktop to the 8930 going and confused myself.