This sounds like the problem that I have recently found with the GUI version of various versions of Octave up and including 5.2. (
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-octave/2020-03/msg00037.html ) By chance, it first occurred first after I installed 5.2. I have since uninstalled and installed octave 5.2 on this laptop using both the install program and the zip version. The GUI program crashes immediately after loading. The laptop is a hp EliteBook 840 with 16 GB memory. I have been unable to track the cause of the problem. Octave GUI is the only program that is causing problems on this laptop.
I should also add that I have installed Octave 5.2 on another laptop and updated Octave on an old desktop and the GUI works perfectly. I have run Octave 5.2 on Linux Mint 19.3 and the GUI works as expected.
It would be interesting to determine if your problem is the same as mine. Can you check the event viewer and see if you are getting an exception code
0xc0000374 in the faulting module ntdll.dll. The event viewer report follows -
Faulting application name: octave-gui.exe, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x00000000
Faulting module name: ntdll.dll, version: 10.0.18362.719, time stamp: 0x64d10ee0
Exception code: 0xc0000374
Fault offset: 0x00000000000f92a9
Faulting process id: 0x2bfc
Faulting application start time: 0x01d6022b486f5f74
Faulting application path: C:\Octave\OCTAVE~1.0\mingw64\bin\octave-gui.exe
Faulting module path: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll
Report Id: fd62ddec-1b3c-4733-94b0-b9166c00b23f
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:
John C Frain, Ph.D.
Economics Department 3 Aranleigh Park
Trinity College Dublin Rathfarnham
College Green Dublin 14
Dublin 2 Ireland
Ireland