Well I've tried all the solutions posted for the past couple years here and other places, and whatever I try I can not get past the launcher. Same problem running from the exe itself, yes in admin mode.

Can someone tell me what this error means, I'm fairly literate generally but don't get these technical problems...

the error that pops up every time I try to launch the game says
"The exception unknown software exception (0xc000000d) occurred in the application
at location 0x7432ed53."

It also really annoys me that I had no problem playing the game years ago, but couldn't get anywhere because of a low-end graphic card. Now that I've upgraded it, somehow all those games that should now work are giving me many more problems. I really don't think I should be spending three hours trying to get a game I purchased four years ago to run...

Finally I am saved! After much grief and searching I've found a random post with the solution to my issue.

*from steam forums*

kuba1024g-
"I had a different problem recently, none of those worked, so I thought I could post it. A local file called gfxcard.txt in appdata/local/The Witcher/logs somehow got my driver wrong and was causing access violation errors. I simply deleted it and the game started to work after an hour of struggle."

I guess an old log from before I upgraded was causing some conflict? After all the fixes I tried with half-hopes, I finally saw my cursor change and the game start up.