Curious @monopalle that you are recommending not using the content pipeline as it’s one of the most powerful features of XNA and now MonoGame. Yes there is an extra layer, however what you get for managing and maintaining your content, it is well worth it. (Keep an eye out as I’ll be doing a fair bit on my new MG channel on this)
Would still like to get to the root of your issue @aetharr (oh and yes welcome :D).
Could you let me know a bit more about your PC build, is it x86 or x64?
After a little digging, I did find a dependency of FreeImage which is the C++ runtime in this post:
You can get the installer for the C++ redistributable here:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=40784
Although it’s odd that this old issue has reared it’s head. I personally am running the same build as you (except I use enterprise) and have never had this issue.
I do need to rebuild another machine (for a demo) so I will try just the components you are using and see if I can replicate