If you're having the issue in steam, where you click play on the Fallout 4 launcher then get the "preparing to launch" window, go into options of Steam and turn off Steam's overlay. Instantly fixed it for me.

Well, I finally fixed my problem! I'm still not exactly sure what the problem was, but I have a laptop with Windows 10. The problem must lie somewhere in the fact that I only upgraded to Windows 10, but when I bought the laptop it was Windows 8. Like I said, not exactly sure what the problem was, but the fix was simply that I had to run the game in Windows 8 compatibility mode. Simply go to the Fallout 4 installation folder, right click the Fallout.exe application, go to properties, then Compatibility, then check the "Run this program in compatibility mode for" and select Windows 8 (or which ever OS you upgraded to Windows 10 from) . The game still crashes every once in a while when I'm playing, but the game hasn't failed to start since! Hope this helps!

I fixed mine, how I did it was by going into Device manager and under display devices (something like this) disable your processor from being a display device

Yup it fixed the launching crash problem for me. I tried launching the game many time, and I can confirm this fixed the issue.

I've fixed it by removing intel from my display devices

So I'm leaning towards hardware issues.

I'm running a radeon hd4890. It's a DX10 card, that has no shaded support. To confirm this was in fact my problem, I downloaded a program that allowed me to forcefully disable shaders and use my card. To my amazement, the game launched, but didn't get very far afterwards presumably due to incompatible hardware. After reverting the settings on the program to default, the game would again crash at launch. I went ahead and ordered a replacement card that not only supports DX11 but is also better suited to run the game than my current card.

I can't remember the name of the program I used btw, and I'm on mobile now. If you run a YouTube search along the lines of "run dx11 games on dx 10 card" one of the first results has a great tutorial with the program.

It does seem that some folks can run games on substandard cards, or maybe even DX10 cards, but I can confirm that this seems to be my issue. I have tried every other fix available on the web to no avail. Will report my results when I get my card in Monday.

Cheers.

Absolutely my old GPU. New GPU works like a dream! Game starts no problems and settings are on ULTRA!

If you have a years old GPU, more specifically a DX10 era card, try an upgrade. Just make sure wherever you buy from has a good return policy in case your issue wasn't resolved. You can always return the card.

I recommend the R9 380. A website that rhymes with blueleg has a $20 rebate going on atm.

Happy wandering!