HydraLich

I do have a bluetooth headset but even with it's adapter unplugged the game still crashes before it even launches.

I believe so, it's been on auto update as long as I've had it and I haven't installed any extra stuff until trying to add this to the game. It has a handful of the free DLC that came with it when I bought it but it's the latest version and I've verified it multiple times.

I've had Rocksmith since 2021, bought it through steam. I don't have any DLCs if that's something that can help. And I've had it installed probably since I bought it.

When I have the D3DX9_42.dll in the Rocksmith2014 folder Rocksmith just crashes as it launches. Switches over to running for a second or two but then goes back to a Play button and never seems to even try to open. It's the 117 KB file that came from the first page here but only if I delete it or pull it out of that folder will Rocksmith launch. I have an AMD processor so I don't think it's the new Intel problem some people seem to be having. Only solution I'm seeing that might work and I haven't tried is buying a DLC and changing song IDs of any custom one I want to play.