I hear that Microsoft Defender slowed down your VLC start-up time.
If your VLC is not starting up within 1 second, try this:
Expand the Start Menu, type “cmd” and pick “Run as administrator”.
In the box that pops up type:
"C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc-cache-gen.exe" "C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\plugins"
If that doesn’t work you might have the 32-bit version installed, so try:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc-cache-gen.exe" "c:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC\plugins"