Whenever I attempt to start a new campaign when updating from .95 to .97 I click on the start button and it turns green but then never ends up launching, it just stays on the main menu and if I try to click the start button again no matter how many times I press it, only the same issue happens.

You can't continue a new campaign from a previous save. I take it, whenever there's new campaign functionality, you can't continue an old save. With 0.97, they added an entire new map, so don't even think about it.

Can you browse to %appdata%\Running with rifles\ and send me your rwr_game.log and metagame.log after attempting to start the campaign? You can send the files to pasi.kainiemi@modulaatio.com. It's possible there is no metagame.log, but I'm hoping there is.

This is generally not true, we certainly are trying to maintain backwards compatibility, but it's possible we overlook some things; 0.95->0.96 had a change in soldier group id's making saves corrupted.