Plutonium Bootstrapper Silent Crash - Need Help

[Dusty_Snake]

Here are the details for the issue I'm having (screenshots).

I've troubleshooted roughly two hours and no progress. AS I'm not tech savvy, I've used AI to help and this is what I've tried:

• Added folder exclusions in Sophos (BO1 game folder + Plutonium data folder)
• Added folder exclusions in Windows Defender
• Added plutonium.exe, blackops.exe, blackopsmp.exe, and plutonium-bootstrapper-win32.exe to Windows Firewall (Private + Public)
• Disabled Sophos entirely (all switches off) — still crashes
• Confirmed VC++ 2015-2022 Redistributable (x86 + x64) is installed
• Confirmed DirectX End-User Runtime is installed
• Confirmed .NET Framework 4.8.1 is installed
• Checked Controlled Folder Access — already off
• Checked Windows Protection History — no quarantined Plutonium files
• Deleted and re-downloaded Plutonium
• Deleted entire AppData\Local\Plutonium folder and let it re-download
• Deleted storage\t5 folder specifically and let it re-download
• Set compatibility mode (Windows 7 + Run as admin) on plutonium-bootstrapper-win32.exe — made it worse (no console at all), removed it
• Changed audio from 24-bit to 16-bit on both playback devices — no change, reverted
• Moved game to a clean path (C:\Games\BO1) to rule out parentheses in Program Files (x86) — no change
• Ran DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth — completed successfully
• Ran sfc /scannow — found and repaired corrupt files, restarted — still crashes
• Verified Steam game file integrity
• Confirmed blackops.exe launches fine without Plutonium

Would've never gone the length to try to get this running, but BO1 is one of my favourite games ever. Hopefully someone here knows what I should do