The VideoLAN Forums

Starting a few days ago, VLC stopped playing videos which it had been playing fine previously. I have tried all the recommended steps but none worked - changing the video output setting (selected each option), uninstalling & reinstalling VLC, checking for driver updates. I found one update from about a week ago for .NET Framework, but uninstalling that did not fix the issue.

When opening a video, whether from File Explorer or within VLC, the first frame of the video is displayed but it will not play. The first button is pause, but clicking on it or the stop button have no effect; I can right click and click pause and it will then display the play option in the right click menu, but it still does not work. Closing VLC does not exit the program; even right clicking on the option in the notification tray and selecting quit does not work - the only way to close it is to forcibly end the process in task manager.

Does anyone have any other ideas? Thanks,

Reset the preferences and try again:
https://wiki.videolan.org/VSG:ResetPrefs

I tried this but unfortunately it did not help;also, when I uninstalled/reinstalled VLC I selected this option as well. The really confusing part about this is that, as far as I can tell, nothing has changed with my computer's setup.

Exit VLC, uninstall VLC then delete the whole %APPDATA%\vlc folder.
Reboot then reinstall VLC.

So that still did not work. The issue appears to be how VLC is (or is not) interacting with Windows. For example, clicking on the action buttons (stop, pause, volume) when a video is loaded do not do anything (they do light up), but app buttons (full screen) do work. I have tried several videos - all of which had worked last week. I also tried playing these same videos in other applications without an issue. I have been trying the nightly builds but have been having the same experience.

Tried playing the "clock.avi" file and had the same issue. It displays the first frame of the clip and won't respond.

Do you hear any sound ?
If not then check this thread:
https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=159261

If you uninstall / reinstall vlc on Windows 11 you will have start from scratch again to configure vlc as the default media player together with all the file types you want to use vlc to open. This is unfortunately one of the downsides of Microsoft's latest OS.

See this article on ghacks.net for more info: https://www.ghacks.net/2021/09/02/micro ... indows-11/

My computer only had the one account, so I created a new one and confirmed VLC played videos without an issue - this indicated the issue was profile related. After uninstalling it (again), I searched through HKEY_CURRENT_USER in the registry for references to "VLC" and deleted them. I restarted, installed VLC and confirmed videos play normally.

Just *what* caused this I have no clue, but at least it's working again!