Well! That was embarrassingly easy, after messing around for a couple of hours. Figures I'd fix it right after posting, right?
Turned out the game was still trying to launch with Intel graphics drivers. After changing the Nvidia Control Panel settings to always use the Nvidia drivers, you have to actually restart the computer for that to take effect. Who'd'a thunk. Anyway. We can leave this up for future reference or just delete, either way is fine by me. Thanks! 😂
Okay... Well, not as easy as it seemed, I guess. By the time I finally got the game to launch and take me to the main menu nicely, it was already 3:30 am, so I went ahead and closed it again and went to bed. Now it's back to doing the same thing I described in the OP. I haven't changed anything since I got up. The computer is still set to use the Nvidia graphics driver. I restarted again to see if that would help. No dice. Here are updated dxdiag and log files, although I don't honestly know that they changed anything. Still running the exe as admin in XP SP3 compatibility, doesn't play nice launching from exe or Origin.
Again, thanks in advance ☹️
Update again (sorry to keep replying to this!): I can run it if I use the config exe to make it windowed. If you open it that way and go into in-game settings and deselect the windowed option, it then kicks you back out and refuses to stay on-screen again, as described in the OP. Again, no game crashes or anything. It's the strangest thing. Even if it's an Intel vs Nvidia thing, I don't have a clue how that'd translate to "yes, I'll play in a window, but don't you dare try to fullscreen me" LOL. I guess this is fine for now, but I really am curious if anyone has a better idea what exactly is wrong here 😅
