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All of a sudden, when I launch VLC and try to play a video it freezes my whole system including the mouse. The only options I have is to press the power button or use the REISUB series of commands. I noticed that there is sound. I've been checking around the boards and a lot of the posts with issues similar to mine seem to be several years old.

My computer has 10GB of RAM. I have Lubuntu 13.10 dual installed and when I switch over to Lubuntu videos play just fine.

I have already tried checking the Task Manager to find out if there are any processes that are using a lot of memory. Firefox was only taking up about 400MB of RAM and the computer still freezes. Even the Task Manager froze.

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Could you add information about your graphic card and its driver. Another point, you may play with preferences > video > output. you need to restart VLC to apply, Some modes may work better –  Sneetsher Feb 13 at 21:36
ATI Radeon HD 7560D video card. Not sure how to find the driver. If it were a video card issue why would it stop working all of a sudden? –  Jason Smith Feb 13 at 21:43
ok changing the preferences>video>output worked for me. –  Jason Smith Feb 14 at 15:15
Nice to hear that, could you write an answer. –  Sneetsher Feb 14 at 15:32

1 Answer 1

I found a resolution to my issue by going to:

Preferences → Video → Output: Changing from Default to OpenGL

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