WOW thanks for the quick reply! unfortunately that didnt work. Ive got three monitors, a 4k, an ultrawide, and an older 1080p monitor. I tried switching the primary screens, alternating the cables, two different hdmis, a vga, and a display port cable. tried using only one monitor. and using the mother board instead of the graphics card.

My issue seems similar to georges problem. Ive never had issues with any blender version up through 2.8 64 bit. I downloaded 2.81a on Dec 5 and it opened for a few moments and then crashed. Since then i have been unable to get any version started up again with the exception of the 32 bit version of 2.8 (which i dont understand). I have tried absolutely every suggested fix on the internet.