The VideoLAN Forums

vlc 1.05 vista home premium. program works fine if I double click a media file, but I cannot just launch VLC.

when I launch it from start bar it appears for like 1 second then vanishes. no error message. start bar short cut is just vlc.exe no strange command line parameters.

have started & paused a media file & checked VLC preferences that way, but what shouod I be looking for ?
NB quit after playback is not ticked.

it must be something that I have done in preferences, because I can "fix" it by backing up VLCRC then reset preferences.
& f i then restore the backed up vlcrc the problem returns.

but I'd rather fix it properly, as doing the above will wipe out many valid custom preferences. SO idealy I want to go in & change whatever setting is causing this behaviour.

If you modify the the start bar shortcut, it still crashes?

If you modify the the start bar shortcut, it still crashes?

hmmm - modify it to what exactly ?

start bar short cut is just the path to VLC.exe . can't really be anything else , can it ?

I found a vlcrc backup from a few weeks back & switched to that. I have saved the "problem" vlcrc i case I want to go back & do further testing.

beacuse vlcrc is a combined preferences & cahce file ? maybe it;'s the cache bit that was messed up ? - I could not find anything untowrd in preferences and have been watching video files daily by double clicking file name, no problem. I figure maybe I had set VLC to close at end of playback somehow so when it is launched with nothing to playback it closes immediately - is that plauasible.

I'd also been trying to debug a situation where I'd watch a movie, click stop or close VLC & my PC goes immediatly to sleep mode. It's set to sleep after 15 minutes of inactivity so it should not auto sleep the minute a video ends.

this was an intermittend issue but maybe the two problems are related ?

vlcrc just stores preferences. Cache is stored to %appdata%\vlc

Sleep mode might happen since the current disable method isn't best possible solution.

vlcrc just stores preferences. Cache is stored to %appdata%\vlc

Sleep mode might happen since the current disable method isn't best possible solution.

thanks- so when problems occur it is possible to clear cache but preserve preferences by deleting only %appdata%\vlc and preserving vlcrc ?
pity they don't appear as 2 separate options on preferences & shortcuts

You might also want to keep vlc-qt-interface.ini and ml.xspf

thanks for help to date - I reckon I'll go with my restored vlcrc from a few weeks back, as that's reasonably up to date, & take regular copies of that if I mess with program settings in future.

i doubt the mystery of why program suddenly took to immediately closing can be debugged easily - doesn't seem like a common / known issue

but with vlcrc replaced by my earlierbackup version, the start bar shortcut works fine.

actually, FWIW, i note that I'm runnign 1.03 on that PC, not 1.05 as I previously stated. ( i trust that VLC program reports its version number accuratly and that the version number is not actually stored in vlcrc ??? )
I think I'll leave it like that, as it seems very stable now, until an update comes out with new stuff that I'd actually need.