MrSco

After I kill launchbox and big box, I can just start them again and it works without having to restart the computer

Oh I completely understand. Besides that the software is amazing and I recommend it to everyone. The crashing is the one pain point and stands out for me since everything else works so great. one thing that seems more unique to my crashes then others is 95% of the time when it crashes there is no error message. Others seem to get an error message. I’ve had error messages and Event log entries and posted them in this thread above I believe. But most of the time, The bigbox process just locks up and all videos freeze and controls are unresponsive. I have to kill from task manager.

Default theme. As you can see from the multiple threads, many people are having the same issue for a very long time now.

Yep. On latest version of everything. Including launchbox 13.14 and using VLC as video setting. Coming up on a decade of this issue persisting. Something is fundamentally broken with continuous videos playing in bigbox. I smell memory leaks or a race condition. But from what I’ve tested my library isn’t the issue. BigBox software is.

I'm on default theme now on a brand new computer with brand new windows install on a nvme ssd. I renamed my Videos folder to Videos_disabled and ran attract mode for 3 days no problems with images only.... but with videos playing i'm lucky if i get 8 - 12 hours. I also ran all my video files through ffprobe and moviepy with a python script to check for bad video files and no errors thrown... import os import subprocess from moviepy.editor import VideoFileClip # Replace 'folder_path' with the path to the folder you want to check folder_path = 'H:/Arcade/LaunchBox/Videos_disabled' def check_video_files(folder_path): print('starting...') for root, dirs, files in os.walk(folder_path): for file in files: if file.endswith(('.mp4', '.avi', '.mkv')): file_path = os.path.join(root, file) try: clip = VideoFileClip(file_path) except Exception as e: print(f'******Corrupted video file: {file_path}******') else: clip.close() result = subprocess.run(['ffprobe', '-v', 'error', '-show_entries', 'format=bit_rate', '-of', 'default=noprint_wrappers=1:nokey=1', file_path], capture_output=True) if result.returncode != 0: print(f'******Corrupted video file: {file_path}******') check_video_files(folder_path) so it seems like bigbox attract mode fails playing video files after some random amount of time. but we already knew that... for years now. I wish it would be fixed. I think @Jason Carr mentioned he did attract mode stress testing with videos playing, but not sure how long

I believe I tried images only years ago. Probably in the thread above somewhere. It’s almost definitely related to the videos playing. That’s the only reason I run attract mode is for the videos. I even tried deleting all the media and having launchbox redownload it all fresh. I even setup a webcam to watch the screen so I could capture when it was dying but it was always a different video/game. It shouldn’t be a mystery to get a bunch of videos to play continuously in shuffle. Wtf

Yep. It’s super lame that bigbox can even run attract mode for a day. It’s just playing videos. I even upgraded the entire computer to an amd 7840hs with 32gb of ram and an nvme 4TB ssd. Computer is a beast but bigbox dies trying to do attract mode for an extended period of time. It’s been like this for years. 6 years or more. @Jason Carr doesn’t seem interested in fixing it.

Thanks. That must be a new setting. Me likey.

I’m having this issue now with the newest version of launchbox. All audio settings are correct and all audio works until after the first game gets switched away from. Then no more sound until I hit a button to stop attract mode and then sound from videos play again.

i spoke too soon... just got a crash... at least there's an error message now? also when it crashed RAM usage was around 12gb out of 16gb and after it was around 4gb used out of the 16gb total. so it looks like a memory leak. I recently upgraded the nuc to have 16gb of ram (instead of 8gb)... Value cannot be null. (Parameter 'obj') App: Big Box Version: 11.11 Type: System.ArgumentNullException Site: Int32 GetGeneration(System.Object) Source: System.Private.CoreLib at System.GC.GetGeneration(Object obj) at Meta.Vlc.Wpf.VideoDisplayContext.Dispose(Boolean disposing) at Meta.Vlc.Wpf.VlcPlayer.<>c__DisplayClass123_0.<VideoFormatCallback>b__0() at System.Windows.Threading.ExceptionWrapper.InternalRealCall(Delegate callback, Object args, Int32 numArgs) at System.Windows.Threading.ExceptionWrapper.TryCatchWhen(Object source, Delegate callback, Object args, Int32 numArgs, Delegate catchHandler) at System.Windows.Threading.DispatcherOperation.InvokeImpl() at MS.Internal.CulturePreservingExecutionContext.CallbackWrapper(Object obj) at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.RunInternal(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state) --- End of stack trace from previous location where exception was thrown --- at MS.Internal.CulturePreservingExecutionContext.Run(CulturePreservingExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state) at System.Windows.Threading.DispatcherOperation.Invoke() at System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.ProcessQueue() at System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.WndProcHook(IntPtr hwnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam, Boolean& handled) at MS.Win32.HwndWrapper.WndProc(IntPtr hwnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam, Boolean& handled) at MS.Win32.HwndSubclass.DispatcherCallbackOperation(Object o) at System.Windows.Threading.ExceptionWrapper.InternalRealCall(Delegate callback, Object args, Int32 numArgs) at System.Windows.Threading.ExceptionWrapper.TryCatchWhen(Object source, Delegate callback, Object args, Int32 numArgs, Delegate catchHandler) at System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.LegacyInvokeImpl(DispatcherPriority priority, TimeSpan timeout, Delegate method, Object args, Int32 numArgs) at MS.Win32.HwndSubclass.SubclassWndProc(IntPtr hwnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam) at MS.Win32.UnsafeNativeMethods.DispatchMessage(MSG& msg) at System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.PushFrameImpl(DispatcherFrame frame) at System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.Run() at Meta.Vlc.Wpf.ThreadSeparatedImage.<>c.<get_CommonDispatcher>b__8_0() at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.RunInternal(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state) --- End of stack trace from previous location where exception was thrown --- at System.Runtime.ExceptionServices.ExceptionDispatchInfo.Throw() Recent Log: 8:48:44 AM Exception

Same here. No crashes in 48 hours. Could be .11 or removing the .flv files. well done sir on identifying the flv! I’ve been dealing with this for 2 years! I was able to remove the relaunch loop from my startup script! thanks to everyone on this thread for their ideas and help and especially to @JohnnyK for figuring it out and @Jason Carr for making the most epic front end software evar!

i went back to check what video file types i have for Ninento Satellaview when i got this crash recorded happening in real-time, but they are all .mp4 ... so i'm not sure its it... but maybe its queuing them up in the background?

quite... i have about 142 .flv video files out of 18,000+ total videos... so that indeed would be random AF if .flv causes the crashes

@JohnnyK here ya go... #SingleInstance ignore SetWorkingDir, H:\Arcade\LaunchBox\ ;get the exe we should run. launchbox or bigbox target := A_Args[1] if (target = "") { target = LaunchBox } targetExe := ".\" . target . ".exe" targetName := target . ".exe" Launcher: ;launch the frontend and wait til it closes to continue RunWait, %targetExe% Process, WaitClose, %targetName% if (target = "BigBox") { Gui, Font, s18 Gui, Add, Text, x10, Relaunching BigBox in... Gui, Font, s32 Gui, Add, Text, vCountdown_text x160, 5 Gui, Font, s14 Gui, Add, Progress, vMyProgress x10 w300 Range0-5 Gui, Font, s24 Gui, Add, Button, w300 h75 Center, Cancel Gui, Show, w320 h240, Relaunching BigBox while (A_Index <= 10) { GuiControl,, MyProgress, %A_Index% GuiControl,, Countdown_text, % 11-A_Index Sleep 1000 } Gui, Destroy Relaunch: ;launch the frontend and wait til it closes to continue goto Launcher } GuiClose: ButtonCancel: if (target = "BigBox") { Gui, Destroy } RunWait, %comspec% /c taskkill /F /IM autohotkey.exe, , Hide ExitApp

If you look in the earlier posts in this thread I posted an older version of my script. I’ll try and post my updated script when I get back home later. most likely you’ll need to customize it for the startup apps you are launching but the relaunch feature is in there and you can rip out the rest