The VideoLAN Forums

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?

VLC was never able to open .lnk files.

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

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.

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.

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

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.