My situation is similar to the OP in many ways. bitcoin core 0.24.01, armory 0.96.5, 64-bit.
Both installed (at least theoretically) to the external d: drive with 1TB storage. Armory displays a small banner screen with loading: 100% at the top.

Does it matter that I installed bitcoin core first, downloaded the blockchain and then synced up?
After that, I installed armory 0.96.5, but needed to change the path for armory to the d: drive after the initial install. I checked the status of the box "prune block storage" in bitcoin core, but that wasn't until after the initial installation.
How do I proceed? What checks do I run, which logs do you want posted in pastebin?

========================== more details - probably superfluous =============
I had a few logs for bitcoin, and then logs for armory before I set the armory windows shortcut icon to "run as administrator" and both directories for the path to the external drive. "target" is d:\armory\armoryqt.exe and "start in" is set to d:\armory. Both configurations are in the shortcut used to launch armory only. Not in a config file.
qt.conf has "Prefix = D:/armory/library.zip/PyQt4" and "Binaries = D:/armory/library.zip/PyQt4"
I have been attempting to run armory without having first launched bitcoin core. Does armory start bitcoin core automatically? Should I run bitcoinqt and then armoryqt?

========================== Some additional background ====================================
I installed both the cold storage - offline - wallet and the online wallet in 2014 on Windows 7 laptops. Not much difficulty was encountered. I used them a number of times without serious issues at that time. I synced up in about 2016 or 2017 and completely filled the hard drive where I had bitcoin core installed. The system was inoperable, so I cleaned it up and used an external drive for the blockchain files afterward. It came back and worked in 2017. 2019 and 2020: nightmare. Upgraded the online wallet to windows 10. Upgraded bitcoin core and armory versions.  If memory serves me correctly, armory worked in roughly that timeframe, but the online laptop encountered platform-related issues and I couldn't get armory to launch again successfully. This current installation is on new hardware and windows 11. It's a clean install.
Can anybody help?  I have the paper backup with password.