The VideoLAN Forums

Windows 8.1 64-bits
VLC 2.1.5 32--bits

The open folder option in the playlist shows the folder itself when it's added, but never adds the files. Double clicking on the added folder in the playlist does absolutely nothing.

After doing a search, I saw a suggestion in the linux forum to reset VLC preferences, and try again. This failed. I've also tried uninstalling, and reinstalling VLC player with no results. I had this problem with 64-bit version of VLC player 2.1.3, and switched to 32-bits to try to correct it. That failed too.

I used to rely heavily on this feature, since most of the files i watch, or listen to are in sub-folders, making it easier just to add the folders, instead of files 1 at a time.

Am I doing something wrong, or is this a bug?

I'm feeling like this is an 8.1 problem or something else. I was about to post that I had a similar problem where parts of the player would just flicker instead of play the folder, but your suggestion of resetting the preferences did work for me and I had also done the uninstall/reinstall older version. Maybe try an earlier version if 2.1.3/5 aren't working, I have 2.0.8 before upgrading and it worked fine and that's what I reinstalled and the preferences thing worked so maybe an earlier version that 2.1.3 might work.

it's not a windows 8.1 issue, because the exact same thing happens on my windows 7 machine, which uses the same version of VLC as the desktop version.

Your explanation is a tad bit confusing. Did you mean to say that you are currently using 2.0.8? Where do i get earlier versions?

Basically one setting needs resetting, and following this post helped me to solve this in three seconds, after months of frustration.
I've repeated the steps here, and included a link to the original post at the end.


FILE TO EDIT

On Windows 7, the file that you'll want to edit is:
%appdata%\vlc\vlcrc [ Goto run and enter %appdata%\vlc\ THEN open the file "vlcrc" in notepad]

Track it down to the demux setting being set to any: To fix, just comment it back(prefix with #) like below: Please see this post:
https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.ph ... 79#p399151

[Thanks to lkraider for suggestion]

Your folder information is off just a bit. In Windows 7, it is actually located in %appdata%\roaming\vlc\vlcrc. I would assume it to be the same in Windows 8/8.1 as well.

I still have 2.1.5 installed on my laptop. I went to an earlier version in windows 8.1. In windows 7, the demux setting was already commented out when I checked it. Thank you for the suggestion, but this did not resolve the issue for me.