I've talked about this so many times before, I guess it's pointless to do it again, but code defensively: if a method/function call can fail, make sure you know when it happens:

Mat I = imread("C:\\images\\apple.jpg", 0);
if (I.empty())
{
    std::cout << "!!! Failed imread(): image not found" << std::endl;
    // don't let the execution continue, else imshow() will crash.
}

namedWindow( "Display window", CV_WINDOW_AUTOSIZE );// Create a window for display.
imshow( "Display window", I ); 
waitKey(0);

Note that Windows' path uses backslash \ instead of the standard / used on *nix systems. You need to escape the backslash when passing the filename: C:\\images\\apple.jpg

Calling waitKey() is mandatory if you use imshow().

EDIT:

If it's cv::imread() that is throwing the exception the only solution I know to work is downloading OpenCV sources and building it on the machine, since re-installing OpenCV doesn't fix the issue.

The problem here is your main() function._tmain does not exist in C++. main does.

_tmain is a Microsoft extension. Here is a nice explanation of these two methods. Further more if you want to add default argument in Visual studio please follow these steps.

1. Right click your project in Solution Explorer and select Properties from the menu

2. Go to Configuration Properties -> Debugging

3. Set the Command Arguments in the property list.

Hope this solves your problem!

#include <iostream>
#include <opencv2/highgui/highgui.hpp>
#include <opencv2/imgproc/imgproc.hpp>
using namespace cv;
using namespace std;
int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
    if( argc != 2)
    {
        cout <<"No Commandline Aurgument Found!: Usage: display_image ImageToLoadAndDisplay" << endl;
        return -1;
    }
    Mat image;
    image = imread(argv[1], CV_LOAD_IMAGE_COLOR);   // Read the file
    if(! image.data )                              // Check for invalid input
    {
        cout <<  "Could not open or find the image" << std::endl ;
        return -1;
    }
    namedWindow( "Display window", WINDOW_AUTOSIZE );   // Create a window for display.
    imshow( "Display window", image );                   // Show our image inside it.
    waitKey(0);                                          // Wait for a keystroke in the window
    return 0;
}

Reproduced with opencv 2.4.8.

If you are running in Debug, check that you are also using debug libraries, it fixed our problem. : OpenCV imread(filename) fails in debug mode when using release libraries.