Stuck at splash screen

[rusticdog]

Thanks for your help guys, it's greatly appreciated. I have solved my problem by getting rid of Ashampoo and installing another firewall. All is working perfectly now with v 1.0.27. Pheeew!!!!!

OK, it's good to know the Firewall was the cause, I guess what I don't like is how Ashampoo didn't alert as you would expect. That said, some quick digging and quite a few folk have this problem also with AVG Updates being blocked by Ashampoo, no support forum on their part too makes it harder to see just how prevalent this kind of behaviour is in their Firewall.