The VideoLAN Forums

upgraded to v2.0

I now get a ~20second delay when I first launch VLC after windows startup.

but only on 1st use - it is fine thereafter.

a pain to debug as a reboot would be needed for each test!

any suggestions as to what settigns could be causing these or for how to log the initial start up next time around ?

the obvious suspect is that the're a hidden online "check for updates" process running on 1st usage, even though that is NOT set in preferences ?

Update check is threaded. So it won't slowdown startup. Only thing that comes to my mind is that your %appdata%\vlc folder is wiped during restart, and VLC has to generate cache again.

Update check is threaded. So it won't slowdown startup. Only thing that comes to my mind is that your %appdata%\vlc folder is wiped during restart, and VLC has to generate cache again.

that would only happen if I had some clean up app - like ccleaner - running at startup or at shutdown, yes?

I don't think I have but I will check that next time. I am 99% certain though that I did dot have this behaviour in vlc1.1 it started only after upgrading to vlc 2.0

ccleaner is not the cause of slow start. it only removes recent art, not the whole cache. I have tested run clcleaner - then open VLC.- I get no slowdown. also, if I was losing my %appdata%\vlc folder then Id be losing my customised controls & would notice that immediately ?

I also noticed a single slow start instance on my other PC. After leaving it in sleep mode overnight. VLC took about 10 secs to load ( & this is a much faster dual core 2.7Ghz processor). but again just the one slow instance, it now opens every time about 1 second or less.

in both installs, check for updates is OFF, and for my recent tests I simply launched the player only from a taskbar right-click ( windows 7), I did not launch by double click on a media file

I am having same issue - 10-20 second delay in initial load, whether clicking on app shortcut or a media file like MP3. Windows 10 Pro x64. VLC 2.2.8 Weatherwax. Had the same issue on older computer which broke. Never resolved. Same situation on older and newer.

I have looked in options for a checkbox to start with windows so that it loads in the background, preferably minimized. No luck.

Any resolution to this?

Same issue here. Never had this issue before, it started recently.
And I have a very good computer, so it's not the issue (SSD NVMe, 16Gb of RAM at 3000 MHz, AMD Ryzen 7 1700X...).

Could you check that you have a (non-empty) file named "plugins.dat" in your vlc install directory\plugins ?

Could you check that you have a (non-empty) file named "plugins.dat" in your vlc install directory\plugins ?

I do have this file. 285 Ko

Update?

Hello?

Is it possible to get any help?

10-20 seconds delay on a cold disk cache is very normal on Windows. One obvious problem is that Windows does not use PIC, so loading DLLs is slow. In the case of VLC, GUI plugin is especially prone to this. There are no ways to fix this, other than start VLC every time you (re)boot.

Regardless, if you think the delay is abnormally long for your system, then you will need to narrow down the problem yourself. It is unfortunately unlikely that somebody else can figure out the alleged problem without access to your computer.

This is caused by DirectX 9 video output plugin. I managed to fix this by selecting/forcing different plugin in Advanced Settings.

Old topic, but I've been using VLC more recently and this is still an issue. VLC is still taking at least 5s to start. And no, it's not a "cold disk cache" thing, I have VLC installed on a NVMe SSD wth a 3000 Mo/s read/write speed, and VLC is the only software that have a noticable slow startup. Even Electron apps are faster to start than VLC.

It might be your computer that is slow. Initial startup takes longer than subsequent startups. I upgraded to 8GB memory. Then initial startup also shorten to 2 ~ 3 second.

It might be your computer that is slow. Initial startup takes longer than subsequent startups. I upgraded to 8GB memory. Then initial startup also shorten to 2 ~ 3 second.

No. Ryzen 7 3700X, RTX 2080 Super, 16 Gb of RAM.

For me it happens either once after a cold reboot or once after the antivirus update.
Since it's done and cached, VLC opens in less than a second.

To bump this thread.....

I've got 2 separate VLC versions (both 3.0.18) running om my PC (AMD 7800X3D, 32 GB, latest W11 pro). One version is a portable (extracted the 7z/zip package to a folder) which is running from my C: drive (SSD WD Black 850x, under C:\vlc). The other VLC version is installed as a standard windows install (install exe or msi under c:\program files\videolan).

The portable version suffers from the slow startup on the first run (about 3-4 sec.). After the first run VLC starts quick (within 1 sec).
The installed version starts quick (within 1 sec.) on the first run.

So for some reason Windows runs VLC differently or has to check extra things. Any thoughts in that?

The portable versions are not made by VideoLAN.org, so hard to say...

With portable version I mean the official VLC versions (NOT the portableApps version).
Just download the official 7z or zip VLC archive and unpack its contents to a folder (and run VLC.exe).

That's slower because it doesn't have a proper plugins cache, as noted up-thread.

Thanks for the pointer. I searched for that and found this post: https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.ph ... 62#p482462
I recreated the plugin cache manually: vlc-cache-gen c:\vlc\plugins
and now VLC start with the speed as expected. Problem solved.

One remaining question; Is there a reason why this doesn't work for a portable install?

You can't have it both ways. If you don't run an installer there's nothing to generate the cache.

Ah OK. I thought it was a dynamic issue.
So, once the cache is generated VLC is good to go.