I don't know who else has this problem, but many of my friends do to. After the Rockstar logos when I first start my game I get an all black screen for about 10-30 seconds. We all run the game as admin and we have a stable modpack. After we wait for the 10-30 seconds to pass by the everything works fine. I have a lowish end computer, but I can play at 1360x768 and medium texture quality with 30+ frames. I have tried re-installing my game along with my friends several times! Any help is greatly appreciated!

It happens to me. What I do is I press home or end ( I don't know which opens Windows Live, so Shift+7 on the very right of the keyboard.) and it'll open it up. Afterwards, it immediately brings up the menu. Hope I helped :)

I have a lot of high poly cars and an ENB installed, plus some mods, so mine takes about 10-30 seconds of black screen before the menu comes up. I'm not exactly sure why, but when I first got the game and installed LCPDFR it loaded up right as the rockstar logo animation finished. The game still runs, so I'm not too upset about it. If it took like 5 minutes to load, then it would be an issue.

 

You could always try re-installing the game and see if it helps.

LMS and I figured this out (well, LMS did after I asked). If you aren't using multiplayer, block *outbound* connections from GTA IV or EFLC in your firewall (or just block them entirely). What's happening is that it's trying to talk to Rockstar's servers for RGSC stuff. Rockstar's servers are slow, hence the delay. We think the reason it's happening more now is GTA V related.

It happens to me. What I do is I press home or end ( I don't know which opens Windows Live, so Shift+7 on the very right of the keyboard.) and it'll open it up. Afterwards, it immediately brings up the menu. Hope I helped :)

If I press home it works sometimes, most of the time I just need to accept a game invite so it can save me a good amount of time.

As cp702 already pointed out, it is waiting for a response from R* servers which can - depending on the current load - take up to a few seconds and blocking this in the firewall definitely helps. The next LCPDFR release provides an option to remove this connection check and the intro logos via memory patching (so no files are touched), allowing you to get ingame much faster and still having access to MP.

Nice work LMS! Makes sense now that it's typed out, will try this at once because I also have this issue. 

I also found that playing in offline mode also fixes the problem, though LMS's solution is probably better for the long term.

Tried to load GTAIV after a couple of months inactivity. Great to see some forum posts already on the issue!