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i had the crash on start up also. simple updating my video drivers fixed that for me, hope the simple of a fix works for you.
Get the 'Return to Castle Wolfenstein v1.42d Patch' fom markshan.com, rtcw-sp-1.42d-win32-bin.zip.

Readme in zip says to backup a few files, then just copy contents of zip into game directory. Game works great on my Windows 10 laptop with integrated graphics, in widescreen and on max settings.

Note: when I started the game, the fmv is jerky, just pressed ESC to skip. The menus to setup the game are horribly slow on the main menu. I don't use them. Just start a new game and ESC to skip the intro, then save the game - the menus now work fine. While in the game, the menus to setup the game work fine now - or will work fine after a proper setup and program restart - so here I setup all my preferences. If I set the resolution to something beyond my display limits, the game crashes and won't start. Solution: go to the 'Main' folder and open wolfconfig.cfg with Notepad, search for fullscreen option and set to 0, also set the resolution back to something safe, like 800x600. Start the game, load your save - here it's again very slow menus for me, but then the game loads fine and then I can setup my preferences, taking care not to set a bad resolution. And the widescreen resolutions are after the standard one, so keep on selecting till you see a WS in the resolutions.

The initial setup is irritating, but it works fine afterwards! After I get through the original, I'll play the mods: RealRTCW - Realism Mod for Return To Castle Wolfenstein, and RTCW Venom Mod for Return To Castle Wolfenstein - from ModDB.com!
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Ghostbreed: Have you tried the unofficial patch? Quake 2 gamers should also have a look at this site.
I installed this as soon as I was done installing RtCW and I'm having zero problems.
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tinyE: That did it! You rock.
It's crazy to me that this hasn't been fixed yet, 5 years later, but here we are. Cheers, and thanks for this. I've been pulling my hair out for the past 24 hours trying to get it going. That my Steam version worked perfectly from the point of purchase didn't help the sting any.
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MegaBurn: I had the same problem. The GOG default install crashes on start up, and with the unofficial patch it quits with the error "GLW_StartOpenGL() - could not load OpenGL subsystem". The troubleshooting docs reference a safe mode short cut which doesn't exist (missing from installer?), deleting or editing the wolfconfig.cfg file which doesn't exist (game quits before creating it), and OpenGL stuff that seems obsolete (3dfx/Glade).

After wasting a few hours on troubleshooting - which GOG should have already documented in both an updated readme and support page - the following solution got it running.

Case (scenario): Fresh default install which crashes on startup -and- with the unofficial patch installed it quits with the "could not load OpenGL subsystem" error, -and- it did not create ~\Return to Castle Wolfenstein\Main\wolfconfig.cfg. -and- no other OpenGL related problems experienced on this Windows PC. Note, specs and driver versions are mostly irrelevant, if you can run other Id Tech OpenGL based games without problems then it fits with this case.

Theory (cause): Bad auto-config script, which can be bypassed using in-game config menu.

Solution (summary): Add some lines to autoexec.cfg to use software render to create the wolfconfig.cfg file, disable software render in autoexec.cfg, edit wolfconfig.cfg file to enable windowed mode (essentially safe mode), start game then use settings menu to adjust settings as needed including switch back to full screen.

Directions:
- Step 1: Open ~\Return to Castle Wolfenstein\Main\autoexec.cfg in notepad (or Notepad++), paste the following lines to the end (on new lines after "set devdll 1" ), and save the file. Closing the file is not necessary. Feel free to adjust the custom height and width to your desired resolution. Note, credit for this config goes to a thread Google found on the Steam forums, unfortunately for them they gave up without trying windowed mode to get it running (not my first run in with bad auto config on old games...).

set r_glIgnoreWicked3D "1"
set r_mode "-1"
set r_customheight "768"
set r_customwidth "1024"
set r_allowsoftwaregl "1"

- Step 2: Start the game. In my case, I received the same "GLW_StartOpenGL() - could not load OpenGL subsystem" error, but it may run in software mode with poor performance, in either case exit as soon as possible (forum comments indicate software mode is unstable, including hard lockups). Check for the ~\Return to Castle Wolfenstein\Main\wolfconfig.cfg file - if this file was NOT created then this solution has failed, start over or try something else.

- Step 3: Edit ~\Return to Castle Wolfenstein\Main\autoexec.cfg, delete the lines pasted in step 1 (so only "set devdll 1" remains), and save & close. Edit ~\Return to Castle Wolfenstein\Main\wolfconfig.cfg, find the line "seta r_fullscreen", change the "1" to a "0", and save & close. Note, further changes will probably be overwritten in step 4.

- Step 4: Start the game, at this point it should run fine in windowed mode (again, if not, you have some other problem). At the main menu (hit esc to skip the intro video), click "options", then click "system", and adjust the graphics settings to taste, maximum, including switch to full screen. Do NOT use the "set recommended" or "default", for me this causes the game to quit with the same "could not load OpenGL subsystem" error, but the game restarts fine, so I'm guessing it doesn't save those settings to the config file.

- Step 5: Restart the game and start the campaign to ensure its in good working order.

Note, in troubleshooting this there are references to starting in "safe mode" but that seems to be missing from the GOG installer, and I did not find a reference to command line switches for either "safe mode" or "windowed mode", any of which would have made this easier.

Hope that helps. Also hope GOG updates the readme file, Support page, and eventually the buggy auto config script.
Thank you! It worked
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tinyE: Anyone else having trouble getting it to start?

ps Thread was supposed to be called "Return to..." problems.

OOPS! :P
You can also use the source port IORTCW to run this game:

https://www.gog.com/forum/wolfenstein_series/iortcw_installation_instructions

There's a stickied thread about it.
I installed game several times and it crushes after launch, all i got is

Wolf 1.32 win-x86 May 1 2002
----- FS_Startup -----
Current search path:
C:\Windows\system32/main

----------------------
0 files in pk3 files
----- CL_Shutdown -----
-----------------------
Couldn't load default.cfg