Ok lots of people, including me have had an issue with the game lately.
What happens is that you start the game and the game will lock up your PC as tight as a drum and than time out on you.
After troubleshooting I have come up with a fix. The Horizons.exe process gets bugged and acts like a "real time" process thread when talking to the database during game start up, this can also stop many network cards (or nics) from accessing the CPU - the game locks you up there until you time out and get a connectivity error.
So here is the fix - run Horizons in windowed mode and have the Windows Task Manager up before you start the game.
When the game starts find the Horizons.exe thread in the process list and right click on it, there will be a little grey menu that will pop up, and at the bottom of the menu is the "Set Priority" option. Chose the "Below Normal" option - WHAM FIXED - and the game loads.
The only downside is that with a below normal thread will hurt performance just slightly.
After you are safely in the game you can set the priority to normal if you like - if the game stops on you when you recall or use a teleporter than just leave the priority at below normal.
Seenu Spelfury