Program (RackAFX) won't open in clean installs of Windows 7 and Windows 8.1

I have a fresh install of Windows 8.1. I installed a program 'RackAFX' but it just won't start. I double click the icon and nothing happens.

I have already installed BOTH the x86 and x64 re-distributables, as mentioned on the RackAFX download page.

Once or twice, Windows reported that 'RackAFX has stopped working' and gave some error codes shown in the following screenshots:

I tried all possible 'compatibility' options too and running as administrator but it still won't open. Now Windows doesn't even give the 'RackAFX has stopped working'. A double click results in a spinning circle near the mouse and then nothing.

Anyway, trying to debug I installed RackAFX on both my wife's Windows 8.1 machine and my old clogged up Windows 7 partition (on the same machine as the problematic partition) and it works no problem. I also tried updating Windows 8.1 on the new partition but it still doesn't work.

I then also added another Windows 7 partition to my new hard drive and installed RackAFX but same thing - it won't open.

Not sure if this helps but this SO post describes how to find the LOC related to 'Exception Offset':

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2528776/windows-c-is-it-possible-to-find-the-line-of-code-where-exception-was-thrown

So, in summary, RackAFX won't open on a freshly installed Windows 7 or Windows 8.1.

Answer

The problem was that the driver for my soundcard hadn't yet been installed and so no default in/out device was selected. This caused the program to crash. Installing the driver and choosing an in/out resolved the issue.