@Christoph-Hart I've been working with @GUJIAN and we found the cause of the issue.
He's in China, and the great firewall blocks google.com. I believe this site/address is used behind the scenes by the function Server.isOnline()? So when he turns off his VPN he basically has to wait for the server call to timeout before he can do anything.
Is there some China friendly method that could be used for that call instead?