Did you perhaps install a codec pack?

Also if you have "Automatically open last project on startup" checked on in the Options-Preferences-General TAB and THAT project is corrupt it may hang. I had this in Vegas 8 or 9 I can't remember which. There no way of turning this off if Vegas doesn't even open. It's like shooting yourself in the foot. So what you have to do is rename any other working VEG file as the same name as the last VEG file you were working on, and copy IT to your last project folder.

I hope this helps.

Not an administrator issue. Have tried disabling Anti-Virus. Have installed nothing new (Including codecs), No changes in plugins, have cleaned the registry, have rolled back two weeks to when I know everything was fine, and it doesn't ever get to a splash screen. As stated in the original post I get nothing but a spinning cursor for a couple of seconds then nothing. Does not open at all. Have tried full uninstall and reinstall including registry items. No go. I'm guessing my only option at this point is a clean OS install. FYI, I'm not a new Vegas user. Have been using every version since Vegas 6 so I seen my share of issues but this one takes the cake. I literally was off for a few days and when I came back and fired up the machine it was a no go for Vegas making me believe maybe it was a Windows update that caused the issue.

New Blue plugins can cause this problem so I imagine other plugs can too. Their activation system is lame. Uninstall any suspect plugs and the problem should be fixed. And YES this is becoming a common problem despite what anyone else thinks.
I've been fighting it since I updated to Vegas 10. Seriously disappointing.

Here is a different thought. I keep all of my video files on external drives. One drive “sleeps” often and takes a few minutes to wake up. When I open Vegas and I am not currently using this drive, it can take up to a minute before the drive wakes up and Vegas loads. I guess because I save all of my projects, it looks for the files before it opens the program. You may want to make sure you have access to all of your drives. Just a thought.

Places to look:

Check Task Manager to be sure no Vegas is running. (Yes, maybe silly, but I've had other programs mess up like this...one hangs and prevents a new one from starting.)

Check the Event Logs for weirdness.

Try running Vegas from the command line from within Windows -Start-Run and enter the following with quotation marks.

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Sony\Vegas Pro 10.0\vegas100.exe" "z:\fishriver june 2010\FR.veg"

Obviously change the path to a known working VEG file.

I am having the same problem with the 32bit version no longer opening. I have a new Windows 7 64bit system. The 64bit Vegas works fine but the 32bit doesn't open. The hourglass comes on for a second, then nothing. Vegas doesn't even show up in the Task Manager during that second. And for what it's worth, I installed the 32bit version *after* the 64bit version, so it's not likely that the 64bit version is affecting it (not that it should, of course, since they both run fine on my old system).

I have administrator privileges and have tried it with the program specifically set to run as an administrator, but still nothing. And I've tried various compatibility modes also, to no avail.

The Event Viewer is no help. It shows that there was an error (Event ID 1001) but offers no helpful info at all.

Any ideas?

Don't know if this is your issue, but snooping around a bit for that event ID popped up a number of posts suggesting memory errors. You might want to grab a copy of one of the free bootable memory test utilities out there, burn it to a CD and reboot from the CD so it can snoop for an hour or two. See if it finds anything with the RAM.

mikey

Thanks for the tip Mikey. Definitely not a memory error though. Vegas is probably the least memory (or CPU) intensive program I run.

Honestly, I don't know why people feel the need to clean the registry...it can cause further problems that were not there before. But forget that. What I suggest is to get "Process Explorer" from SysInternals (http://microsoft.com/sysinternals) and run, set the filter to look for the vegas executable name, and see what it's hanging on as it starts.

Could be a corrupt file or disk fault. Do a chkdsk or equivalent in Win7 (select drive Properties>Tools>Check now).

After uninstalling all Sony apps, delete all folders with Sony in the name (do a search). (I note Mercalli has a .Sony folder, so bear that in mind).

If that doesn't fix the problem you could delete all references to Sony in the Registry by hand (after first backing it up of course) and see if that helps.

The next thing to try is to restore an old image of your C: drive and reinstall as appropriate.

Final try is to refornat C: drive and reinstall everything.

One thing that kills Vegas startup is problems with DX. I can't remember how but I recall there's a way to check if all DX components are ok.

edit: run dxdiag