I've noticed that over the last few days that when I've run the FTB launcher, 90% of the time on the first attempt at running it I get the FTB splash-screen (the grey box on your desktop with the FTB logo and a "loading" bar below) ... but nothing happens. I go into task manager and according to it FTB isn't running ... but no matter what I do I can't get rid of the splash screen.

If I run the FTB launcher again, all of a sudden the loading bar fills up and the launcher runs as normal (but the FTB splash screen stays on my desktop).

Now the weird bit ... when I run the FTB launcher for the first time and it works - the splash screen only shows for a few seconds, during which the loading bar never fills - then it disappears and the Launcher opens up.

So why when it plays up for the first time, why does the loading bar take about 30 secs to fill when it doesn't normally take that long to run the launcher?!?

Just wondering if anyone else has had this bug? I haven't updated the FTB launcher / Java, or changed any of the game files recently ... nor have I installed any windows updates.

Oh - I'm running Windoze 8.0 64-bit for info

yes I get the same, you can kill the process (javaw.exe) to kill the hung progam and next time it should load. There is a new version of the launcher, I have not upgraded to it yet, might fix things.

well i updated and i think it made this worse for me.
now ever 4 attempts i get the stuck loading splash.

Edit: Seems that it is working but it does take longer to load the launcher now compared to the split second before.

OK - so it isn't just me then ... what OS / bit (32/64) are you guys running?

i've not had problems with mine for a while, done all updates aswell, one thing that was a problem was the connection to their hosting service, if that lags at all, the launcher hangs for a bit till it can time out, then it'll use its default configs.