I may have found a possible solution to the problem.
Others seem to be having a similar problem as I mentioned above, such as...
https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-dolphin-will-start-up-once-and-then-not-start-again
...although I failed to mention in the OP that the emulator would open once and upon closing and reopening Dolphin, it would fail to launch.
I tried various other development versions of Dolphin and one of them triggered my Antivirus's (Avast free version) Auto-sandbox program execution mode and it ran fine in the sandbox mode. So, putting two and two together, I downloaded a program that would open other programs in a sandbox, and Dolphin launched successfully, several times even, as long as it was running in the sandbox.
So, I guess I'll be running Dolphin in a sandbox from now on. It works just fine in the sandbox too AFAICT, although it fail to run once in the sandbox.
Others seem to be having a similar problem as I mentioned above, such as...
https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-dolphin-will-start-up-once-and-then-not-start-again
...although I failed to mention in the OP that the emulator would open once and upon closing and reopening Dolphin, it would fail to launch.
I tried various other development versions of Dolphin and one of them triggered my Antivirus's (Avast free version) Auto-sandbox program execution mode and it ran fine in the sandbox mode. So, putting two and two together, I downloaded a program that would open other programs in a sandbox, and Dolphin launched successfully, several times even, as long as it was running in the sandbox.
So, I guess I'll be running Dolphin in a sandbox from now on. It works just fine in the sandbox too AFAICT, although it fail to run once in the sandbox.