Opening VLC media player 3 takes a long time to open
There can be many causes for a slow launch in VLC 3, but here are two solutions I've confirmed help:
Solution A
VLCwin7User on the VideoLan forums came up a solution that I will paraphrase and add to:
-
Bring up an administrative command prompt in the vlc.exe directory. This would typically be
C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC
for 32-bit, orC:\Program Files\VideoLan\VLC
for 64-bit.
(To bring up an administrative prompt in this directory, open the Start menu and typecmd
. Right click onCommand Prompt
and selectRun as administrator
. Then typecd
, space, and then the VLC directory, and press enter.) -
Issue
vlc-cache-gen .\plugins
enter... which generates \plugins\plugins.dat
This brought launch time down to less than a second on my machine.
Solution B
This is the solution I had originally tried, but it only reduced the launch time by about 25%. I'm putting it here for completeness. I did not notice this making much difference after using Solution A from above.
- Open VLC preferences via the menu or by pressing CTRL+P.
- Select
show settings
>All
from the bottom left corner - In the
Advanced
section, uncheck "Scan for new plugins"