VLC Slowdown Blamed on Windows Defender Bug

VLC's slow startup issue has been affecting some Windows users for over a year. The media player can take up to 33 seconds to start playing an MP3, which is absurd on a modern PC.

The problem is blamed on Microsoft Defender, but it's not just a simple case of the two software companies pointing fingers at each other.

VLC's developers have been working on a solution and have found that regenerating the plugin cache with vlc-cache-gen.exe or reinstalling VLC can fix the issue. However, this doesn't mean that Microsoft Defender is not involved somehow.

In fact, several users have reported that excluding the VLC folder from Windows Defender restores instant startup.