I'm on a LAN and haven't noticed any connectivity issues. I do use an openVPN connection so I can access another datacenter. Could that be related? Maybe a routing problem?
I've also seen a slightly different crash while manually starting and stopping it in order to provoke the issue.
I'm watching the process with Sysinternals' Process Monitor to compare successful runs and crashes. I have 3 apps to check for updates.
On a successful run it creates 8 threads and has 3 TCP send/receive/disconnects in this order: SRSRSRDDD (S=Send, R=Receive, D=Disconnect). 5 threads exit, then the process exits.
On the first crash I reported, 8 threads are created and there are 2 TCP send/receives but no disconnects (Order: SRSR). No threads exit. That appears to indicate it's crashing in the network connectivity code.
On the second crash, 8 threads are created, and 2 TCP send/receive/disconnects occur. (Order: SRSRDD). No threads exit. The order is odd, because the third connection doesn't appear, even though the other two are disconnected. I'm not sure where the crash is happening to explain that order.
Let me know if there's any info I can provide to help diagnose this.