I can not program the NRF52840 with the programmer software on windows 8.1. However when I run a virtual machine in oracle virtual box using windows 10 it works. I would rather use windows 8.1 for various reasons. As an additional note, I had a similar problem with WOR (Windows on Raspberry pi), it can only be written to USB through windows 10, so I use a VM to run 10 in those cases. I have used this scheme on different machines, so I know its not specific to the hardware. I noticed on your programs report that it says ia32 when Im using a 64 bit version of 8.1 on a 64 bit machine as well.
The programmer gives the the following detail when I select my devices drop down list when it fails:
# nRFConnect System Report - 2022-08-06T05-44-34.336Z - System: HP HP Notebook - BIOS: InsydeH2O CCB.03.75.20F.08 - CPU: 1 x AMD E2-7110 APU with AMD Radeon R2 Graphics 1.8 GHz 4 cores (4 physical) - Memory: 5.8 GB free of 7 GB total - Filesystem: C: (NTFS) 300 GB 39.3% used - OS: Microsoft Windows 8.1 Enterprise (6.3.9600) Windows ia32 - Versions - kernel: 6.3.9600 - git: - node: 14.16.0 - python: - python3: - nrf-device-lib-js: 0.4.11 - nrf-device-lib: 0.11.8 - nrfjprog DLL: 10.15.4 - JLink: JLink_V7.58b - Connected devices: - F6F97E669C4A : undefined