Crash on launch from launcher due to internet options "automatic configuration script"

Minecraft 1.13 consistently crashes on Win 7 x64 with Java 8 when trying to launch from within the launcher. Noticed that the crash happens when it tries to download "patchy.jar". After some experimenting, found that DISABLING Internet Explorer | Internet Options | Connections | LAN Settings | "use automatic configuration script" solved the issue. Now I was able to launch Minecraft without any further issues at all.

 

I think it is quite bad that the code crashes on this! No useable logging is generated.