The VideoLAN Forums

Good afternoon!
Has faced such problem. If after video viewing to stop VLC in some seconds the computer hangs. The picture on the monitor becomes static and the computer ceases to react to something, reboot will rescue.
Tried to understand with a problem independently and tried various variants, in particular it was possible to find out:
1. Reinstallation Windows - has not solved a problem
2. Updating of the version to vlc-0.9.4-win32 - has not solved a problem
3. VLC the player starts to hang only if to appoint associations with formats in options, in other cases works normally.
4. If to appoint associations in options VLC sometimes it gives out an error message directly at start and suggests it to send in MS.
5. Repeatedly to reanimate VLC by a life to have to go Documents and Settings-user-Application Data and to delete there a folder vlc with options.
6. After occurrence of problems with VLC starts as to hang absolutely Power DVD it is not dependent on the version.
7. Other players, for example, Light Alloy, Media Player Classic playing video without problems.
Who can knows, what it and how it to treat?
OS Windows XP Prof SP3
Package of codecs K-Lite Codec Pack (one of the last)
Forgive for my English, I not so am on friendly terms with it)

VLC cannot freeze your computer. Bad device drivers or broken hardware can.

And unless bad device drivers or broken hardware can so selectively to influence work of programs? Usually, if does not work, everything, and here is somehow selective.

Not all programs use same commands or access certain device parts. That is why computer might work perfectly on most cases but on certain cases it will crash or freeze.

well i'm in the same situation that he is and i had enough of reading on these forums the same answer that "it's not our problem, it's your drivers". Isn't there any testing tool for this?

for the past 4-5 years i had to avoid using vlc (kept trying v0.7.x, v0.8.x, and now 0.9.x) at home because it freezes the computer when it finishes playing a file (usually avi containers with xvid video stream and ac3 sound stream), the stop button is pressed or is simply closed.
cpu: athlon xp 2500+ barton.

At work, on an amd athlon 64 it works ok... most of the other components are the same: same realtec ac97 sound driver (wdm A406), nvidia gforce 5200 (forceware 93.71-updated both to 175.19 in january, nothing changed.), nforce mainboard drivers latest ver, all win updates available from microsoft update are installed, including IE8 and directx mar 2009 redist.

the only major difference between those two is the CPU, as the one at home, Athlon XP 2500+ doesn't have support for SSE2 cpu instructions, and i think one of the vlc components insists on executing SSE2 code on a non-SSE2 aware cpu even if SSE2 is unselected in the advanced prefs window and this causes the freeze. it doesn't generate any bluescreen or any other message, it simply freezes the CPU.
Of all the programs i have used these past 5 years on this pc, VLC is the ONLY ONE that (as a side effect) is GUARANTEED to freeze my computer.
NotMyFault from Sysinternals can do that too, but is designed this way

There isn't any freeze/BSOD sherlock tools for normal consumers. Driver devs can use debuggers and other tools. If you get BSOD, it might reveal the problematic component.

If you can play some media at VLC, you can usually limit the problematic component. So if for example audio only files work OK, then issue isn't in audio device drivers.

Antivir, firewall and some copy protection removing/securing software also install device drivers that can crash computers.

Exactly the same problem with my PC. Computer freezes completely after a DVD video is stopped and the "close" button is clicked. No response to keyboard or mouse movements any more. PC has to be restarted with the reset button. No such issue with any other video player or another program.

I have VLC video player version 0.9.9. I also tried the previous version (0.8.6h) and the latest pre-release (1.0.0-pre2), but there is always the same issue.

All device drivers are up to date.

Configuration:

VLC 0.9.9
Windows XP Home SP3
DirectX 9.0c
Asus K8N mainboard
Nvidia nForce3 250 chipset
Athlon64 3000+ processor
1 GB memory
Matrox Millennium P650 graphics card

Does it help if you change video output module to something else?
http://wiki.videolan.org/WindowsFAQ-0.9 ... _output.3F

No, it does not help.

I tried "Standard", "Windows GDI" and "DirectX", but always the same problem. After clicking on the "close" button, the VLC window closes, then (~ 5 seconds later) the PC hangs and has to be restarted with the reset button.

Perhaps I should note that this issue seems to be present with DVD videos only. Other formats (*.mpeg, *.avi, *.flv) appear to be OK.

Does the crash happen if you play DVD Video content from hard drive?

Sorry, I can't tell. I have just a few DVDs, and the files appear to be copy protected. I can't copy them to hard disk and play them from there.

You should be able to rip DVD movies with tools like AnyDVD or DVDfab decrypter. Or you can download legal test files from internet.
http://www.archive.org/details/BigBuckBunny

I've got a similair problem that I'm working on fixing, but its a little different... I usually fall asleep watching a movie/tv shows/etc etc, and upon waking up in the morning find that the system/system idle processes are both eating 50% of my cpu (amd 64 x2 dual core 3800+) only if I have vlc running. and restarting is the only solution, its possible that the freezes the above posters are talking about is the same problem/cause, and as far as testing it's simple to just watch the process list in the task manager to see. If it is the same thing, it causes things to run at a snails pace, and its impossible to end tasks at all through the t.m. simply because of it.

I got the same problem.

I currently have set the audio out to "Win32 waveout extension output", and the video out to "Windows GDI video output", which i think should be the safest options. I closed and opened VLC after setting options, as most of them seem (if not all options) seems to need that to take effect.

The movie i was playing when hung uses XVid for video and a52 for audio.
My VLC version is 0.9.8a Grishenko.
I have a Chaintech GeForce 5900XT board, and my nVidia drivers are version 93.71, with DirectX 9c.

I don't know if this helps, but i had the same problem when exiting F.E.A.R. several times.

Well, i have almost same problem. But i know my graphic card is "Burn" but still usable. I encounter problem of viewing the screen properly after playing game for awhile(Coz graphic card heat up). It is a laptop but after i blow out every dust from the "heat sink" gaming problem solve while the problem of hanging when playing video still exist.

The solution for me:
Under preferences, go to video then untick accelerated video Output.


Hope it helps.

Old thread, but the same problem has now started for me as well. The chain of events was:

1) Last Friday I used VLC to watch an original DVD. It was a bit tricky disk, wouldn't play on mplayerc, but otherwise everything was normal.

2) Earlier this week I tried to use VLC for something. Every time it crashed at start, even after a clean boot. "Unexpected Error" and the usual questions about sending a report to Microsoft.

3) I uninstalled my VLC (0.8.6), wiping out all the preferences and configs and upgraded to the latest version. Now the program started ok, but two seconds after pressing STOP after file playback, the whole PC freezes and a forced reboot is required.

4) I tried uninstalling the new VLC, re-installed the old one, but the effect is still the same - so this depends on something else than the VLC version.

I haven't manually installed any updates in between, but I have system mechanic pro (which updates itself all the time) and XP pushes some updates, which may have broken something. I tried running all registry cleans and fixes in system mechanic, but they didn't help. Tried to enable logging in VLC, but no log is created. No RRD either. Tried to disable and unload system mechanic firewall and antivirus - no impact.

Pausing is fine, opening another file after pausing is fine - but stopping kills the whole PC. No similar problem observed playing back the same files with other players, e.g. DVBViewer, mplayerc.

Video codec in my tests was mpgv, audio codec either mpga or a52 (no difference). The problem was first observed when playing back M2TS files on the new VLC. I wonder whether that installed or upgraded something (...which would require SP3, for instance), which doesn't get removed or rolled back with the uninstall?

System info:
BIOS: Award v6.00PG
XP HE 5.1.2600, SP2 (SP3 didn't work with my tuner card)
AMD Athlon 64 3500+ (2211 MHz)
1 GB Memory
MS-7125 Motherboard
Nvidia GeForce 6600 256 MB
Realtek AC97 (on motherboard) + EWX 24/96 Audio card

Help much appreciated!

2. Remove %appdata%\vlc folder.
3. Driver or hardware problem.

See my reply under Window hangs - VLC hang on stop in ALL environments. This is not a hardware problem.

VLC hang on stop in ALL environments.

No. It doesn't.

Well it does for all the environments I have tried. So far I find that VLC_Help to be very unhelpful!

I have just downloaded old version 1.0.3 and this problem does not occur with that version. Please can 1.0.5 be fixed as soon as possible.

Thanks

I have also downloaded the latest nightly build (4May from Branch) and the problem has been fixed in that version.

Thanks

I faced with same problem (computer hangs after stop any video on vlc). Any other player don't lead to freezing (tried light alloy, windows media player classic, the km player)
vlc-1.1.11-win32
windows xp sp3
Windows reinstall don't help.
Removing %appdata%\vlc folder don't help.

VLC cannot hang computer. Broken hardware or buggy drivers can.

vlc (version that comes in ubuntu) hangs ubuntu.
On windows, 1.1.11 hangs after stopping in fullscreen. These are basic, not the precise conditions to reproduce. The difference from ubuntu is that the os remains operable. Older versions didn't have this problem.