unsure what to try, upon launching cyberpunk2077 just instantly crashes, does not even try to run,

I installed the visual studio 32 and 64 bit runtimes no change.

tried running the exe directly no change, just instantly crashes.

any suggestions ?

What are your specs? Did you whitelist the game with your anti-virus? The AV might be sniping the game as it's launching.

first gen Ryzen 7 16gb ram
geforce gtx 1660
windows 8.1

the only anti-virus i have is windows defender and it isn't stopping it from running, it runs then immediately crashes, I guess I will try whitelisting the installation directory but I don't think it will change anything

edit:whitelist made no difference, running directly from Cyberpunk2077.exe made no difference, also running compatibility with a different version of windows and administrator you guessed it, made no difference.

this point i am out of ideas

edit2: so the actual error from the log

Error reason: Unhandled exception
Expression: EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION (0xC0000005)
Message: The thread attempted to read inaccessible data at 0xED65B0.
File: <Unknown>(0)

edit3:above is running the game exe directly the prelauncher just gives a windows "this application has stopped responding"

final edit: I guess I found out it just won't run on windows 8,1 so that was a huge waste of time. can't see myself upgrading to 10 or running outdated 7 which is the reason I am on 8, no (official) linux support either so I guess its refund time.

Have you tried verify/repair? If that doesn't work I think you should contact support.

you misunderstood, I checked the support articles, it states it won't run on windows 8 at all.