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VLC 1.0.1 slow to load

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September 25, 2009 - 6:35pm
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Darkbee
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VLC 1.0.1 slow to load

Is anyone else noticing that the past few versions of VLC including the most recent 1.0.1 takes a while to start up. Typically, it takes somewhere between 20-30 seconds for the main app window to appear. This happens to me on 3 different computers, all running Windows XP and from an internal hard disk.

Curiously, if I close VLC then re-open, any subsequent loadings are almost instantaneous. Is this something to do with caching?

So is VLC slow for anyone else? Once it opens, it's great but it just takes a while to get there. Is that just the way it is?

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September 25, 2009 - 8:08pm
John T. Haller
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Reset

Have you tried resetting the settings? It's possible yours are a bit corrupted. You can do this by deleting the contents of the VLCPortable\Data folder. It will create a new default set on the next launch.

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

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September 26, 2009 - 3:33pm
(Reply to #2)
Darkbee
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Reset

Thanks for the response.

Tried the settings folder as you suggested, I even tried deleting the entire VLC Portable folder, but no change. I thought that might mean that the install executable is corrupt but I verified correct download with an MD5 hash.

One common thing across all three computers is that it is being launched via a 3rd party launcher application, although that application is PStart on two computers and Toolbox Launcher on the third (Sorry, not PortableApps launcher!), but I don't think this is the cause of the problem. I will test launching VLC directly though to see what happens.

Other than that, all I can think of are: other software conflicts such as anti-virus, or operating system advanced performance settings but I'm using the system defaults to the best of my knowledge.

I'm running AVG and I do know that in the past it slowed one of my previous older systems down horribly. I'll report back any findings.

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September 26, 2009 - 8:36pm
(Reply to #3)
NathanJ79
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Tried this too

I tried this as well. 39 seconds to load as opposed to possibly a minute plus. So it is an improvement. Corsair Flash Voyager 16GB, they're supposed to be pretty fast, and it was just under my Corsair Readout 4GB (well, my wife's now) in performance, and the Readout was 2nd or 3rd fastest among flash drives (excluding portable hard drives) in that speed test topic a few months back. But in any case, VLC takes roughly the same amount of time to start up on my external hard drive at home (7200RPM model, needs its own power supply and all). And while Portable Firefox takes a good 10-20 seconds to start up from the flash drive, it comes right up at home.

I don't think installed VLC was all that fast, either. VLC is in some dire need of fine tuning, or perhaps a helper app that loads at startup or something, the portable version of which could start with the Platform and exit with the Platform as well?

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September 27, 2009 - 10:05am
(Reply to #4)
Darkbee
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Helper Apps

I think I'd rather live with it than start using helper apps, all you're doing there is shifting the pile of dirt from one place to another. In my experience, instead of one application taking a minute or two to start up, Windows itself will take a minute or two to load up because it has to start up a dozen or so helper apps.

If not everybody is experiencing this problem then there must be some kind of hardware/software configuration that is the cause of this slowness. My money is on anti-virus/anti-spyware resident scanners.

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September 27, 2009 - 7:18pm
(Reply to #5)
NathanJ79
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Good points, but...

DarkbeeI think I'd rather live with it than start using helper apps, all you're doing there is shifting the pile of dirt from one place to another. In my experience, instead of one application taking a minute or two to start up, Windows itself will take a minute or two to load up because it has to start up a dozen or so helper apps.

More like taking a pile of dirt and leveling it across a greater area. Say VLC takes 60 seconds to start up, because it's loading various parts. If you could take away a lot of that by having it load in sections, or part of it earlier, it would spread it around some. In any case, helper apps are not a good solution, rather because they take up resources when you are not using the app. So it's kind of a no-win situation.

DarkbeeIf not everybody is experiencing this problem then there must be some kind of hardware/software configuration that is the cause of this slowness. My money is on anti-virus/anti-spyware resident scanners.

Neither running on this terminal. It has some kind of corporate/IT AV, Trend Micro, but it doesn't load with Windows. It's done over the network. No anti-spyware either, because I ran an anti-spyware portable app from another site, and it detected all sorts of stuff. A couple trojans, MyWebSearch, and one other thing in addition to the mostly-harmless tracking cookies. So no antispyware running in the background here.

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