Does Minecraft need to unpack its launcher on every launch?

I'm running Minecraft in a lab environment, with everyone's AppData on a network share. Minecraft (1.7.4, and launcher 1.3.9, currently, on XP) runs fine, but one part of the launching process seems odd to me:

When the bootstrapper runs, one of the steps is to check for updates to the main Launcher, download, then unzip the launcher.jar file. For us, this unpacking step happens on every launch -- even if there's already an up-to-date launcher.jar in the user's folder, it's deleted and a new one is unpacked in its place.

Is that normal? If not, got any ideas what might be causing it?

Thanks!

2 Answers

Yes the "unpacking launcher" just means that the launcher is starting up. It happens every time.

Im having the same problem, but I don't think its normal. My laucher did not have to do that every time at first, but now it does. You may copy all of your data (world saves, settings etc.) at This pc > Local disk > Users > [User name] > YOU NEED TO UNHIDE THIS FOLDER! TO CHECK HOW YOU NEED TO DO THIS, GO TO THIS LINK! AppData > YOU NEED TO UNHIDE THIS FOLDER TOO Roaming >.minecraft. The path for this all is [DRIVE LETTER]:\Users[USER NAME]\AppData\Roaming.minecraft . Copy all of this data. Then go to and download the laucher again. Before you run it, you need to make sure that minecraft is uninstalled. Just search uninstall in the windows search menu. That just reinstall the laucher, get all of the data back in the .minecraft folder, and your done!

Hope this helped!