VLC: VLS 1.0 portable crashes when playing songs

I have attempted opening music and videos with VLC 1.0 portable. The app loads fine, select open a file, browse to it, select it. The app then closes, it will not play.

This has occured on local drives and network shares.
Opening MP3s and WMVs have had the same experience. I have not tried other media so far.
Running it on Windows XP SP2 as a non-admin user.

This seems quite bad.
Any input, suggestions, or similar experiences?