The VideoLAN Forums

After 4 hours of trying to troubleshoot VLC it has suddenly decided never to open up on my computer anymore. It bounces in the dock a few times and then closes. Old versions won't open. I trashed the prefs and app and reinstalled from a fresh downloaded copy and the same thing happens.

Any suggestions?

try installing it on a different user account on your machine, to isolate the non-working one

Are you sure that the folder called "VLC" in your preferences was deleted as well? It is in fact more important that the plist.
Feel free to use the script provided on VLC's disk-image to remove everything that could trigger a conflict.