Occasionally, when I start FSX-SE it will hang in the splash screen.  It never gets to the point of loading what is in dll.xml (at least not down to the ones where the dialog box asks whether or not to run a program).  The only way it seems to fix is to use the task manager to kill fsx.exe and then start it up again.  Task Manager shows 0% CPU usage for fsx.exe when it is stuck like this.  I once left it that way for an hour -- still ended up having to kill it.

Is there a fix for this behaviour?  I've already disabled preload.

There could be lot's of things....That happened suddenly? Did you install something recently, any new add ons? There is nicely written guide under Hot Spots here on AVSIM, on right side of this Forum which you should keep handy....That might help. With dll.xml there is special chapter where you can select what to run and what could cause the issue.

The usual suspect for not getting past the "Splash" screen is a corrupted Logbook.bin file.  You could

try going to your My Documents/Microsoft Flight Simulator X folder and renaming the Logbook.bin file

and let FSX build a new one for testing.  Try several flights to see if it helps.  You can always search

for a logbook repair tool to fix your original file.