The VideoLAN Forums

This is the error message I get when trying to open several different files. The files play sometimes.

File reading failed:
VLC could not open the file "C:\Documents".
Your input can't be opened:
VLC is unable to open the MRL 'C:\Documents'. Check the log for details.
File reading failed:
VLC could not open the file "and".
Your input can't be opened:
VLC is unable to open the MRL 'and'. Check the log for details.
File reading failed:
VLC could not open the file "Settings\carter\Desktop\chipmonks".
Your input can't be opened:
VLC is unable to open the MRL 'Settings\carter\Desktop\chipmonks'. Check the log for details.
File reading failed:
VLC could not open the file "trailer.mov".
Your input can't be opened:
VLC is unable to open the MRL 'trailer.mov'. Check the log for details.

In the association from file extention to VLC there is missing double quotes around the argument. Somewhere it says to open vlc.exe %1 when you click an avi file. But since the path contains a space this is converted to two arguments. It should state vlc.exe "%1" instead. I cannot remember where you set these options in Windows though.

Yeah I have not idea how to find that.

Uninstalling and reinstalling VLC might fix the problem. Else you can do some checks. First open a command windows (cmd.exe) as administrator if you are on Vista / Win7 with UAC enabled.

Then type assoc followed by a space and the file extenstion you have problems with, for example .mp4. [enter] is where I press enter, you do not need to type it. So for the file extenstion .mp4 an association called QuickTime.mp4 exists. Now I can check which program is associated with that: If you do the same with what ever file extensions you have problems with I expect the double quotes to be missing around the "%1". You will need to change that using ftype like this: