VLC very slow to start

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

plugins.dat does not need to be writable. VLC might try to write it for the sake of robustness: The file may be missing because of manual installations especially. But it is not an issue if the file is not writable, as long as the content is correct.

plugins.dat should be generated at VLC installation. At that point, the plugins directory most definitely ought to be writable.

[VLCwin7User]

I ran the installer as admin, so plugins.dat got created, no problem. VLC is trying to delete and create the file during its normal operation, so I wound up losing the file while playing with it.

It was easy to reinstate plugins.dat, simply start VLC as admin, and presto, file was recreated. Back to running VLC as an ordinary user now.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

So, I agree with the other poster that indicated that plugins.dat needs to be located in a user writable location, such as %appdata%. Unfortunately, since plugins.dat needs to be writable and is currently in the Program Files location, this setup follows the Win95 security model.

Be careful, you are stepping on a shaky ground here Developers will insure you that most of their users want to run multiple versions of VLC on their PCs, so they would want to use the same plugins cache, or that multiple users should use the same plugins cache, because their probably all use the same stuff (as they share same PC, collective mind probably). It's probably 90% of they users, you know.

/s

You're just very uninformative.

The plugins cache needs to be on a writable location depending on the VLC plugins installed on the computer. This is not user-dependant, but machine-dependant, therefore it is installed in the correct place, NOT in %appdata%, because appdata is user-dependant.

Trolling stupidly will not get you very far.

[boldizar96]

Guys, I found something!!!

Open: Tools -> Preferences
Under Show Setting select "All" to show all settings
Go to: Playlist
Uncheck everything except: "Pause on audio communication" and "Automatically preparse files"
Click Save

Before that my VLC start time was about 10 seconds, but now it's less than 1 second!!!

I hope I could help!

[wroot]

Didn't do anything for me. Maybe it is a bit faster when starting VLC alone. But i test this by launching a movie file (with a double click) after a system reboot (+1 min. wait for everything to load). It still takes long and actually when Auto Start is disabled in the Playlist settings you also have to press Play additionally to start playing a movie. In my case excluding in the antivirus settings is still the best solution.

[PluX]

Running Win7 X64 and experiencing these same slow loading problems with VLC 2.0.X and 2.2.1. Which i also discribed in a seperate post. Loading any file (networked, from USB devices or from local disk) takes between 40 seconds and 1 minute. It used to be near-instantly. Tried all solutions to this i could find, but neither cache nor AV scanners seem to be the problem and resetting vlc does not have any effect, media library is disabled as well and changing playlist settings or the folder security for vlc or plugins dir did not work either. The machine rarely reboots and usually just hibernates. I hope there is something we are overlooking and something else we could try because this is making it very hard to work with VLC

When i drag and drop files into an already loaded player they open instantly, It just takes ages to load the application itself.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Running Win7 X64 and experiencing these same slow loading problems with VLC 2.0.X and 2.2.1. Which i also discribed in a seperate post. Loading any file (networked, from USB devices or from local disk) takes between 40 seconds and 1 minute. It used to be near-instantly. Tried all solutions to this i could find, but neither cache nor AV scanners seem to be the problem and resetting vlc does not have any effect, media library is disabled as well and changing playlist settings or the folder security for vlc or plugins dir did not work either. The machine rarely reboots and usually just hibernates. I hope there is something we are overlooking and something else we could try because this is making it very hard to work with VLC

When i drag and drop files into an already loaded player they open instantly, It just takes ages to load the application itself.

MKV?

[Ultraspider]

Hello,
As this is the first result in google regarding that problem, I'm going to reply in it with another possible cause and solution.

My system: Win 7 64bit, VLC 2.2.4, desktop computer.

Long story short, I noticed a lot of activity related to wacom and tablet input dll's when the vlc process was hanging.
I remembered already having issues with other software (photoshop, battle.net, ...) and tablet input (remember I'm on a desktop with no touch input). Stopping the service named "Tablet PC Input Service" solved these issues.

I searched that way and found a service called "TabletServicePen" from Wacom. Disabling the service "TabletServicePen" solved my issue with vlc. It now starts without any delay.

Workaround for tablet users:
As disabling the service can prevent my wacom tablet to work, I searched a bit & found that page ( http://viziblr.com/news/2011/8/13/fix-m ... ows-7.html ) which provide a software to disable all the windows touch and pen setting that could interfere with the wacom tablet on that OS. Applying those settings now allowed to restart the wacom service and still have the issue solved with VLC. Dunno if it will hold a reboot though. not tested yet.

Hope that helps.
Cheers.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

It's probably a Qt issue, btw.

[smarty123]

I am having the startup issue (on all systems regardles if touch,non touch, notebook or Desktop-PC - all systems Windows 10 Pro. Same happens on Server 2016 standard

3.0.0-git X64 (current build 23.11.2016 and months before)
---------
first start takes about 25 seconds to display GUI of VLC
all future starts until reboot take about 0.5 seconds

2.2.4 release X64
--------
always starts up in under one second
- but does not support my panasonic dlna server and even not plex media server to be played (both devices show up but cannot be drilled down). V3.0.0 does support both of them thats why i need 3.0 features.

[railfan-eric]

i don't know if my problem was related but on a fresh win10 install i was having slow startup up to 30secs for any videos on the USB hard drive. thought my hard drive was having problems or something. i watched the task manager and most the time when this was happening the windows defender would start scanning whenever i would click on a video to watch from the USB hard drive. i since put AVG on and now all is good. i wonder why windows defender would hold up VLC from loading a video?

[smarty123]

calling vlc-cache-gen.exe ./plugins from the vlc installation folder (runtime=2secs) solves the problem until next reboot.
Once rebooting a windows 10 system and then (even after some minutes windows up) calling vlc.exe without doing vlc-cache-gen.de before still takes about 30 seconds to display the vlc 3.0 gui

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Of course, if VLC files are in the disk I/O cache, then loading VLC is much faster. This is true of any application (of reasonably small size).

The more relevant matter is the delay difference between starting after reboot, and starting after reboot and deletion of the plugins.dat file.

[smarty123]

reboot with programfiles/vlc/plugins/plugins.dat present: about 25sec on a i5/8Gig/SSD.

deleted plugins.dat
rebooted again
vlc gui is loading 25 secs

deleted vlcrc from appdata/vlc
rebooted again
vlc gui is shown quickly

reverting to 2.2.4 /x64 -> fast start always. Since 2.2.4 does not support my panasonic tv dlna server streaming and 3.0 does i need 3.0

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

In that case, it's ostensibly got nothing to do with plugins.dat, and everything with your VLC preferences.

[smarty123]

I assume that too, but it is nothing special with MY vlcrc since it occurs only when using vlc 3.0.0 and estimated since the time when vlc 2.2.4 was released.

just to clarify: When i delete vlcrc and then reboot gui first start of the gui is fast, creating a new vlcrc and asking for the 2 checkboxes update etc. After next reboot gui is slow again.
So i think something changed in 3.0.0 regarding the vlcrc that causes a "pull the brake" effect on 2nd startup even after a new vlcrc is created.

BTW: plugins.dat is always untouched after once being created with running vlc-cache-gen.exe <pathtovlc>\plugins. it keeps the installation date.

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Then interrupt VLC under a debugger while it is stuck, and file a bug.

[smarty123]

uhm sorry. im not a programmer. Dunno how. If i could enable logging and provide you with a log file just give me a hint how to enable it...

Since the "save playlist" is broken on builds after dec 18 im stuck with the build before anyway...

[atsukoarai86]

I'm running Windows 10 now and VLC takes literally hours to start. I tried to open a file near bed time and literally 10 hours later it suddenly opened. I have tried everything - EVERYTHING - talked about in this thread. I have no idea what the problem is. Was this issue ever resolved?

[atsukoarai86]

Well, as it turns out, I uninstalled VLC and downloaded the 64 BIT installer and now it seems to work just fine. Cheers.

[SpiritShadow]

I turned off the "Automatically Preparse Files" option under "Playlist" settings and this fixed the problem for me. VLC now comes up instantly. Previously took 30-45 seconds.

Preferences > Show Settings (All) > Playlist > Automatically Preparse Files (off)

[darkbyte]

Hi I tried this on my windows 7 and it worked on VLC 3.0.8 in 2020!!!, this answer from 2013 wowhoo!
DB.

I have had this problem ever since installing Windows 8 Pro 64bit.

It didn't matter weather I opened a video file or opened vlc directly it would still take a good few minutes to start. I tried all suggestions but none worked for me, so I tried looking at the compatibility mode options, I tried running vlc as administrator and the UAC prompt appeared, I clicked yes and vlc started straight away, which seems to point to a permissions issue.

I did the following and it has worked for me.

Go to - C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC
right click the vlc application and click properties
click the security tab
click advanced
Change the owner to yourself ( in my case home\Tom )
click ok and close all dialog boxes
then...
right click the vlc application and click properties again
click the security tab again
click edit
highlight your account name
check the allow full control box
click apply
close all dialog boxes

vlc now starts straight away for me, my problem seemed to be related to the fact that my account didn't have full rights to the player which is weird since i have only one account on my pc which is a local admin.