on start up of the gamed, after the launcher, when clicking on any button on the start menu the game freezes.

A fresh installation of the game has been downloaded, also the old launcher has been used to try and resolve the issue, to no avail. tried the game in 1.11, works just fine. Also tired down grading java to an older version with no luck.
When startig the latest snapshot (18w03b)
_+17:37:56 net.minecraft.realms.RealmsBridge Client thread error Realms module missing
17:37:58 yj Client thread warn Unable to resolve BlockEntity for ItemStack: minecraft:light_gray_banner
17:38:00 yj Client thread warn Unable to resolve BlockEntity for ItemStack: minecraft:light_gray_banner+_