I just had the same issue when upgrading to 0.9.6. It looks like the only thing deleted was uninstall.exe.
And the uninstall log is empty. I'm running XP SP3 BTW.
Another weird thing is I would've never known that this happened if I didn't have VLC open when I was upgrading. It ran the uninstaller (the 1st time) and I thought 0.9.4 was uninstalled. When I ran the installer for 0.9.6, I got an error that said unable to write to VLC.exe. So I closed VLC and went to the VLC folder expecting only VLC.exe to be there but apparently
nothing was deleted. So I ran the uninstaller again and only uninstall.exe was deleted. Maybe if I had closed the player before doing the installer (which runs the uninstaller before doing the installing of the newer version), it might've uninstalled properly? In future versions of the uninstaller, there should be a message box telling people to make sure all instances of VLC are closed before proceeding (assuming that is in fact the reason the uninstall/reinstall process gets derailed). Even if it isn't, its probably a good idea to warn people. Its partially the developers fault because I got the newer version via the upgrade check in the Help menu. VLC should automatically close itself when the upgrade is finished downloading the new version or tell people to close it before upgrading. Some programs do infact do close themselves during an upgrade and I guess I assumed VLC would too (this is the 1st time I upgraded via the upgrade checker). If I had downloaded the update manually (which I usually do) then it would've been completely my responsibility to close VLC before upgrading.
Why can't the new version be installed over the old version instead of uninstalling and reinstalling anyway? Wouldn't newer versions of files be replaced either way?