VLC Grinding to a Halt

[Guest]

I have been using VLC for years on various machines with no problems af any kind. That is why this is so weird..

2 days ago, I opened it to watch a movie and it seemed to lock up ithe machine. I thought it might be because the movie was in .bin format (I have never had any problems before though...) so I converted it to .mpg and it worked fine.

The next day, I tried another movie and the same thing happened. I just uninstalled, downloaded the newest version, reinstalled and tried again..locked up. I went to open a movie and explorer just sat there looking. In fact, the hard drive is still going like mad as I type this.

Usually, I have to hard reboot (this is on a laptop so I have to unplug it and remove the batteries) in order to reboot since it just sits there and never finishes rebooting.

I have loved this program for quite some time and hope that I can get this resolved....

Thanks for any help anyone can throw my way.

[Ringo]

I sent the above...I didn't realize that I wasn't logged in....sorry.

[markfm]

OS?
If it's Windows, please make sure you have the latest video drivers and DirectX. You might want to do a clean update on both -- pull fresh copies from the vendor sites (whoever did your laptop, for the video, plus MS for DirectX).
There is such a thing as file corruption over time on a hard disk. A few bit hits here and there might make something work 99% of the time, but on 1% where the app calls something that is corrupt, boom
Otherwise, open the VLC messages window before trying to play a file, so you can capture what, if any warning/error messages are generated. Select View-Messages.

[Guest]

Of course...now it works fine.....

I will have that window open just in case though.

Thanks!

[The DJ]

resetiing the VLC preferences (see the pref. dialog) can fix lots of issues as well usually.