[2022] Ck3 crash at splash screen / endless "initializing game"

You say you've only had this problem a few days, yet older versions of this game now cause this to you. IOW game versions that used to work on this machine now do not - would you agree with that? If so that has to be some local issue.

There is actually a slightly later nVidia driver (473.81) than the one you mention above, may as well try that

GeForce Security Update Driver | 473.81 | Windows 7 64-bit, Windows 8.1 64-bit, Windows 8 64-bit | NVIDIA

Download the English (US) GeForce Security Update Driver for Windows 7 64-bit, Windows 8.1 64-bit, Windows 8 64-bit systems. Released 2022.8.2 www.nvidia.com
There's no mention of a crash in ck3.exe in that dxdiag.

One disturbing thing though is dxdiag.exe itself crashed:

DxDiag Previously: Crashed in system information (stage 4) & DirectShow (stage 1). Re-running DxDiag with "dontskip" command line parameter or choosing not to bypass information gathering when prompted might result in DxDiag successfully obtaining this information

+++ WER4 +++:
Récipient d’erreurs 85982104327, type 4
Nom d’événement : APPCRASH
Réponse : Non disponible
ID de CAB : 0

Signature du problème :
P1 : dxdiag.exe
P2 : 6.3.9600.17415
P3 : 54504e9f
P4 : vorbis.acm
P5 : 0.0.3.6
P6 : 50a51541
P7 : c0000005
P8 : 0000000000001f4f

That's pretty rare and may indicate a deeper Windows problem!

Are you wedded to Win 8.1, or were you ever considering going to Win10 or 11? If so this might be a good time to make that jump!