It would seem that I'm the only GOG user struggling with this issue, but...

For some reason, BS5 won't start up. It hardly throws out an error message at all.

After some online trawling for possible solutions, I checked on Steam's website. Turns out more people who downloaded the game with Steam had the same issue as I have than people who downloaded it from GOG.

After the solutions offered on the Steam forums, here's what I tried.

1.) Updated my drivers
2.) Installed OpenAL
3.) Made an exception for the GOG games folder in Microsoft Security Essentials.
4.) Uninstalled Microsoft Security Essentials
5.) Tried to launch the game as an administrator
6.) Tried to launch the game from my root folder

All to no avail.

If there's a possible solution, please do not hesitate to let me know! I hate wasting hard-earned cash. I'm running Windows 7 32-bit on a Dell Latitude E6410.

Thanks in advance

2 Other things worth trying:

1) If you've got ZoneAlarm installed, that will interfere with the game working too, so uninstall that if you have it.
2) In the game directory there should be a second executable (BS5_ff.exe) Use that to boot the game. (It's an alternate game engine for people with video card issues.)

I'm also having this issue. Was told by support to reinstall VC libraries but this did not work either.

I don't see a BS_ff.exe in my install folder either.

You should provide more information about your system (hardware, OS, etc.) in order to get help.
That said, do you get any error message?
Have you tried reinstalling the game and rebooting the PC?
If you use Galaxy, have you tried closing it and launching the game from its own executable?

Installing OpenAL might help too as it's required by the game: however its library should already be present in the installation directory. It's normal: the game got a big update in 2022 and that file is no longer included in the last version.
Speaking of this, if you use Galaxy you could try rolling back to an earlier release and see if this would work on your system.

Nitro AN515-57
Processor: i5-11400H @ 2.70GHz
Memory: 16GB
GPU: RTX 3050 Ti

Redownloaded and reinstalled the game via Galaxy. Repaired install. Reinstalled VC libraries.

No error from Galaxy, just refuses to launch.

Running the exe manually gives 0xc000007b.

Tried the openal dll. No change.

There is no oalist file in my fresh BS5 install, nor does the GOG hosted link seem to work.

NVM got it running. Thanks

Can you provide information how did you got it running? I'm having the same issue and tried all the steps mentioned. Game still refuses to launch...