Using SKINS. I did not think I was a moron-until now!

[SHUNNEWELL2]

Hello everybody this post reaches. I am an every day pc user. Not a code writer, computer nerd. I do not have a degree in computer science, though it seems the wonderful and inteligent people who had a hand in developing this fine product, feel they are lowering their standards by helping a peon such as myself.I have sent several e-mail's to people listed as being proficient in their knowledge of this product. However, to date, I have not received a single reply. I have spent well over 2 1/2 hours reading posts (as instructed to do) before asking my question, which some may believe to be trivial. Of my 4 pc's,
two laptops & 2 desktops. I have the VLC player version 1.0.3 on my two newest. One is an HP privilion dv9000 with Win XP-Pro, an Intel Pentium 2 processor,
T-7200@2Ghz & 2GB of ram. It has a G-Force Go 7600 Video Card. I know pentium 4 would be better, But it is what it is! On my desktop I have an ASUS motherboard using a Pentium 4 - 2.80GHz with 2 large (150 Gig & 250 Gig IDE harddrives. The video card is a Diamond Radeon X1050.
My problem, I have done my homework spending well over 21/2 hours reading the forum and another 2+ hours loading and unloading skins. After some initial problems I have gotten the skins to load on the desktop pc. The problem there is it has made my machine unstable. Most of the time the VLC player will have to be shut down via the Windows Task Manager (not good), no matter what skin I try. Wether I download the whole page or just one. My pc becomes unstable.
When I donot use a skin there is no problem. I have scanned, defragged, registry cleaned & removed all programs I rarly use to my other hard drive and still the skinnable VLC remains unstable. As far as my laptop goes,I cannot get a skin to load on the VLC player no matter how much time and effort I put into it.
No matter what skin I try, downloading all, or just one, any one, I get an error message window stating,
"File reading failed:" VLC could not open the file:C:\Programs File\VideoLAN\VLC\\skins\default.vlt:" If I start all over again via (Programs\VideoLAN\Quicksettings\Reset VLC Media Player Preferances and cache files") and start anew, the same thing continues to happen. I have even went to "Add Remove Programes" Removed the VLC player, skins and everything pertaining to it. Reloaded VLC player, with always the same result. I know how to change a skin based on my 4+ hours or reading and trial & tribulation. As stated, I got them to work on my Desktop and can change them at will,(though unstable). I would appreciate some constructive help so I can find out "why" this is happening. Do I need to use a skin on the VLC player? NOT!
But the fact that they are there and I can't, pissis me off to no end! You always want the things you can not have, Human Nature!
If there is anyone out there with some patience and knowledge, is willing to help someone beneath their IQ, it would be greatly appreciated.
Sorry for the long post. Respectably: Scott H- Queen's NY.

[3breadt]

Dude calm down, we all know that VLC is not the most user friendly program, as it was originally designed for professionals.

Don't expect answers if you email those involved in making popular open source software to ask for support with such issues. There are hundreds of thousands who use VLC and thousands who have problems with it. That's why there is a forum. Don't expect E-Mail Support for such a large project, which is just run by volunteers.

Now to your problem. The error message you get on your laptop is strange, normally VLC should have no problems with accessing its default skin. Maybe a Pentium II is not enough to run the skins mode, but that's just a guess.
Concerning the instable behavior on the PC I'm not sure what could be the reason there. Do you have a decent virus scanner?
Does it also get unstable when you use the black/silver default skin? If not, then you probably have tried opening a broken skin, because there are some skins which do not work properly.

[rtjwilde]

Whoa easy does it. You stated that you "scanned, defragged, and cleaned your registry. Does that mean you scanned all your machines and scanned for what? It's possible you have spyware or virus on all your machines. Also you might have conflicting software running on your machines. For example let's pretend you are using Norton for firewall and virus protection. And let's pretend that somehow Norton had a setting that didn't allow the use of certain tasks and that setting was enabled. Furthermore, you said you uninstalled VLC and reinstalled. Does that mean you uninstalled and then reinstalled the original VLC install file you had, or did you download another install setup file. If not maybe your install file is corrupted. Another thing, did you ever go looking in the VideoLAN skins folder to check if the .vlt files are even in the folder they need to be? The bottom line is this. By your description the number for what might be the problem is very high and many could have nothing to do with vlc at all.