Videos don't open in VLC from Windows Explorer

[victorcharles]

For several years now I've never been able to play videos in VLC by double-clicking on them in Windows Explorer- even the Explorer context menu option "Play with VLC Media Player" doesn't work. In either case, the VLC player starts up but it never opens or plays the video- it just opens with a blank black screen and never plays the video. I always keep my player updated and I've always hoped that one day one of the updates would cure this problem but it never gets fixed. Can anyone please help me figure this out. The only way I can play videos is to start VLC and open them, but I miss being able to use the context menu in Explorer.

[Hitchhiker]

Do the videos have a vlc traffic cone icon? If they do, then it may be due to corruption somewhere. To fix it open preferences (Ctrl + P) and click the big Reset Preferences button at the bottom of the opening menu. Save, exit and restart vlc.

If the videos don't have a vlc icon then set vlc as the default application to open video files in Windows Control Panel ---> Default Programs.

[victorcharles]

Yes they have the cone icon- all my file association settings are set correctly. Like I said in the original post, double-clicking on the files DOES open the VLC player. The problem is that the video never gets opened by the player. It just opens with a blank black screen, nothing else happens. So Windows is launching the player, but the player is not playing the video.

[Hitchhiker]

Logs

To help you, we need messages, to completely understand what your problems is.
To fix this, please be sure before you start the playback to:

1. Open: Tools -> Messages.
2. Set Verbosity to 2
3. Start playback to reproduce your issue
4. Save text in a file or copy into clipboard
5. Then paste the full resulting log here between [​code]and[​/code] (or use Pastebin.com if it's too long)

Also don't forget to name your Operating System and provide the VLC media player version.

[hardreign]

I had the exact same problem recently. I think it started after i installed a PC Cleaner program. i dont know what it did but VLC failed to open any file, audio or video, by double clicking in Explorer. I upgraded VLC by totally removing the old version and downloading the newest version. It still failed to open any file by double clicking in explorer. I then went into VLC / tools/ Reset Preferences
I worked straight away. Now everything opens again on double click in explorer!!!