[Bullethead]

How long are you waiting between the splash screen and giving up on it? In between the initial splash screen and the game starting, the game is trying to phone home and check for updates. It lets your connection time out up to 10 times before giving up. All this time, the game will not show up in Task Manager because it isn't running yet.

If you haven't run the game in 2 weeks, you're due a patch or 2. The game will automatically try to download them immediately after it checks your license. So what I'd guess is happening is that something on your end is blocking the download. Firewall perhaps? Anyway, it won't run until it downloads the update.

You might try dropping your firewall, or otherwise telling it that SES downloads are OK. If that doesn't work, look in your main Jutland folder for any files called *_log.txt, and send them in.