Fails to launch: Soma.exe has stopped working

[DougPP]

I've tried the user guides & help and looked at the HPL and Launcher files and can't understand why it's not working (no obvious/intelligible errors).

My system:
Win 10 64-bit
CPU i7-5930K
GPU 980ti Amp Extreme(6gb)
32Gb Corsair DDR4 ram
M.2 512Gb SSD
Note:
Fairly new PC build. No junk/bloat. Have turned off the very few apps (asus mobo & corsair fan controls & utilities). Hardly anything outside of OS & steam running. No anti-virus or virtually anything installed besides games (which ALL work fine except SOMA).

The error I see in the HPL file is about the .tga files "cannot load".
However, I checked the folder and the files are there.

Note: I've been unable to ever launch/run the game so whatever settings it's using are *default* (saw a thread mentioning "[user]_...config" which doesn't exist on mine as it's never launched & created).

Lastly - display:
Monitor is 60hz, 4k res & g-sync (which works fine w/many games & works automatically).
Doubt if that's pertinent as it defaults to whatever res & it hasn't ever successfully launched.
It *blinks* & says like trying to create window before immediately displaying the "soma.exe stopped" crash.

Really appreciate any help as I've been looking forward to this game a long time (after owning Amnesia) & built the new PC for better gaming & VR.