The VideoLAN Forums

Hey guys, I'm new to using this media player and I've got a quick question. Why is it that it made changes to two of my system32 files? Vista now keeps telling me when the player is open that some other program has stopped working, it says something about Nero. Any information regarding this will be greatly appreciated.

It shouldn't change any files. What files it says it has changed? And where did you download VLC?

AVG says there was a change made to shell32.dll and ntoskml.exe. I ran and antivirus and spyware scan and there were no errors. AVG recognizes it just as a change not as an infection so I'm not sure what to do. Since that happened I uninstalled vlc, bit torrent and the movie I got just to make sure its not messed up or anything, but avg still recognizes the change.

*edit* Yeah I got it from this website.

VLC doesn't install anything to System32

Weird I wonder what it was.

Can you get anything more specific information from AVG logs?

Sadly it won't let me look into exactly what happened there. All I know is that its just recognized as a change but not a threat of any kind.

many bittorrent clients changes code in a system file in vista to increase the number of available to the client this has been known for a while
however it should be noted vista takes the registry as a system file and any non Microsoft scripted changes will cause this error.
also to note shell32.dll and ntoskml.exe are system critical with out them your system cannot start up as such there are backups kept by windows XP and vista in a hidden folder (sadly i can't rember exactly where) a system restore will replace thoese files.
it may be worthwile running Microsoft free safety scanner at onecare.live.com as being coded by microsoft it should give a more specific description of the error with the file and/or fix it (it workes in xp don't know about vista version).