gnucash doesn't start on Windows 8.1

[Joe Vornehm Jr.]

I recently upgraded to Windows 8.1 Pro (x64) from Windows 7 Home x64, which
necessitated reinstalling gnucash 2.6.5. gnucash now fails to start.
Watching in Process Explorer, I see that the gnucash.exe process is created
but disappears silently one to three seconds later, with no output. There
is no splash screen and no console output. A trace file is created with
each invocation, but it is empty (zero bytes). I'm at a loss for even how
to diagnose what's going wrong. Can anybody offer some suggestions?

Here are some things I tried: I reinstalled gnucash 2.6.5, by uninstalling
first and then running the installer, and also by letting the installer
invoke the uninstaller. I tried installing the latest stable build dated
2015-01-26 [1]. I tried the "Run As Administrator" trick [2], several
times. The behavior was the same in all cases--the process died quickly.

I checked an earlier thread from this list about a similar-sounding problem
[3], but that thread did not seem to come to any conclusion. My machine
hasn't been run in a dual-monitor setup since upgrading to Windows 8.1, but
I did use a second monitor in Windows 7 before upgrading. Disk space is not
an issue. I don't think permissions are a problem but don't know
specifically what the thread meant.

Any ideas on how to proceed?

Joe

[1] -
http://code.gnucash.org/builds/win32/maint/gnucash-2.6.5-2015-01-26-git-5e60a23+-setup.exe
[2] -
http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/index.php?title=Windows&oldid=11399#Windows_7_64-bit_-_GnuCash_fails_to_run
[3] -
http://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-user/2013-October/051129.html