The VideoLAN Forums

This is a really strange problem that virtually started overnight. Prior to that VLC has played everything flawlessly. But noew when I attempt to play any files with the . mkv extension, nothing happens with regards to video or audiio playback, and my page file usage instantly jumps from a few hundred megabytes to two point something gigabyte!

If I go into Processes and close down 'vlc.exe' I can run other files (.avi, .wmf), But if I don't do this, vlcplayer will not respond to any new palyback requests. I have tried uninstalling vlc, downloading the newest installer. resetting preferences, cleariing my page file.. I'm by no means a superuser, so any help would be much appreciated!!

Have you tried to delete VLC folders?
http://www.videolan.org/doc/faq/en/index.html#id269529

Do you mean to delete this folder? : C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\vlc\vlcrc

No haven't tried that yet, thanks for the suggestion! This problem is really frustrating.

I am experiencing the same problem. VLC plays my .avi and .mp4 files but .mkv files do not play and causes the paging file to blow out. Exiting VLC through the File menu closes the application but leaves the process running, which needs to be ended using the Task Manager. At the moment, Task Manager tells me I have a VLC process that is using 41,248KB of memory and my PF is 1.62GB. If I end the process my PF drops to 395MB.

I have reinstalled with 0.8.6d (no change) and then deleted any VLC folders I could find and reinstalled but the problem remains.

For some time I have been experienced a problem where I cannot "cold start" VLC on a .mkv file. If there was no instance of VLC running and I tried to play a .mkv the video would pop-up and then immediately close. Audio played as normal. To play a .mkv I had to open a .avi (say) and then open a .mkv. It was all rather odd but workable. It now seems VLC has decided to stop playing .mkv files all together.

EDIT:
I have an ATI Radeon based video card and noticed this thread - viewtopic.php?f=14&t=42684. It took a heck of a lot of time to get .NET installed so I could update the video drivers and software but it seems to have cured my .mkv problems.

Its exactly the same problem I'm experiencing. Only I use Nvidia, so the thread you mentioned will not aid me I'm afraid. Does anyone have a suggestion to solve this for a Nvidia-card (Geforce 6600)?

It is a known issue that to many Matroska files in the same directory cause lockup problems for VLC and other players.

Try moving a MKV/MKA file to an empty directory and try again.

If you have created a long playlist with lots of files try shutting off the prefetch function in Preferences, Playlist "Automatically preparse files"

These suggestions assume that you have tried erasing the Preferences folder without success.

Yes, I've tried erasing the preferences to no avail. But I've just tried out your suggestion and it works!! Fantastic. I never imagined it could be something so simple.

Many, many thanks DJ!!

It is a known issue that to many Matroska files in the same directory cause lockup problems for VLC and other players.

thank for your help DJ works awesome