Versions 1.8 and up crash immediately on startup

[Fancy_Hat]

As the title says, whenever I've tried to launch any version of KSP from 1.8 up the game immediately crashes; the screen goes black and the cursor changes to its in-game appearance for about a second, but then the Unity crash handler throws up an error window:

and the application closes itself. I've had this issue for months now, and it started occurring with a copy I'd already been using for some time but has persisted throughout the numerous times I've tried to use fresh installations. As I wrote this, I downloaded portable copies of 1.8.1, 1.9.1, and 1.10.1 from KSP's website (because I tended to use the installer and frankly I'm grasping at straws) to make sure they still weren't working, and they all failed in exactly the way I described. For the record, there was no crash log or anything, and while normal logs have (I think) been created they're pretty much empty, only showing very basic information about my system and the application. My computer's specifications (copied from that log) are:

OS: Windows 10  (10.0.0) 64bit
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8565U CPU @ 1.80GHz (8)
RAM: 8079
GPU: Intel(R) UHD Graphics 620 (2147MB)
SM: 50 (Direct3D 11.0 [level 11.1])

I've tried to solve this problem before, and it's clear that there are other people that have had this problem, but to be honest I don't understand what the solution is or if there even is one. From what I've gathered I think it has to do with my graphics driver, but if that's the case I don't know what I'd have to do exactly to resolve the issue. I've tried updating the driver, at least, but that didn't do anything; I'm thinking I might have to just trial-and-error my way through older drivers until I find the one that worked. I've managed with keeping the game at 1.7.3 for now, but it'd be nice if I didn't have to.

[Gargamel]

Are you using the launcher?  If so, don't.   It hasn't worked right for many years.    Try launching directly from the KSP_x64.exe. 

[Fancy_Hat]

On 10/3/2020 at 4:13 AM, Gargamel said:

Are you using the launcher?  If so, don't.   It hasn't worked right for many years.    Try launching directly from the KSP_x64.exe. 

I don't remember the last time I used the launcher; it was certainly long before I started having this problem.