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MrSco

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Posts posted by MrSco

    Big Box - Crashing while in attract mode

    in Troubleshooting

    Posted

    On 2/15/2024 at 2:08 PM, arcademode said:

    Yeah it's a bummer man. I'm starting to side with @faulkkev here, Bigbox is a paid product and the fact it's crashing while using attract mode isn't good since it's a pretty basic feature. This thread hasn't been updated in nearly a year so is this crash problem just not a priority or what? One would think such a crash would be high priority.

    EDIT:

    Good gracious, it appears to be some kind of ongoing issue and in some cases for several years. It seems there have been fixes along the way, no telling what or why though.

    Here is another (older) thread reporting attract mode crash issues: 

     

     

    18 minutes ago, Retro808 said:

    I highly doubt Jason or the team are not interested. Last I spoke to them about this he was not able to replicate it to be able to track down what might be an issue. This was something that plagued me for quite a few years. Between 6 total cabs/builds running BigBox it would affect each them differently or not at all. On 2 of my cabs it ended up being corrupt video files (took some testing but eventually I found which platforms had the culprit files). On one other it just stopped being an issue. Two of them never even experienced the issue. I have not had a single crash in any cabinet in well over a year. 

    Have any of you tried removing your video folder and running BB to see if you get any crashes? Not saying this is the true issue, but it is one known to cause this for some users?

    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

    • Like 2

    Big Box - Crashing while in attract mode

    in Troubleshooting

    Posted

    On 2/15/2024 at 2:08 PM, arcademode said:

    Yeah it's a bummer man. I'm starting to side with @faulkkev here, Bigbox is a paid product and the fact it's crashing while using attract mode isn't good since it's a pretty basic feature. This thread hasn't been updated in nearly a year so is this crash problem just not a priority or what? One would think such a crash would be high priority.

    EDIT:

    Good gracious, it appears to be some kind of ongoing issue and in some cases for several years. It seems there have been fixes along the way, no telling what or why though.

    Here is another (older) thread reporting attract mode crash issues: 

     

    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. 

    BigBox crash while sitting idle doing attract mode

    in Troubleshooting

    Posted

    2 hours ago, MrSco said:

    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 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

     

    • Like 1

    BigBox crash while sitting idle doing attract mode

    in Troubleshooting

    Posted

    On 4/26/2021 at 2:47 PM, JohnnyK said:

    Well I did the update, AND removed those files... so it could have been anything.  I dont know what the update fixed from .10 to .11 that would have solved my issue.  But maybe Jason knows.   All I know is the only meaningful thing I did was remove those odd video files, Images and then updated.  

     

    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!

    BigBox crash while sitting idle doing attract mode

    in Troubleshooting

    Posted

    On 7/3/2020 at 7:32 AM, MrSco said:

    I’m running the new 11 update and I setup a webcam to watch attract mode and catch the crash happening. It happened after about 3 hours of attract mode running. After restarting bigbox I tried browsing the section of games it died on (satellaview) but they all displayed fine (some video snaps and some image snaps) and no crash. 
     

    the only other thing I can Think of that could be causing it is a program I use in the background to control the volume and default audio devices via hotness... Volume2... https://github.com/irzyxa/Volume2

    could you maybe try running that program in the background to see if you experience issues with it? Maybe the volume control hooks in bigbox are fighting against volume2 randomly?

    it does indeed seem to be something with my Windows environment though...I’d like to figure it out and not just format the computer and it starts working without knowing the cause. 
     

    Great updates lately! thanks for the help!

    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?

    BigBox crash while sitting idle doing attract mode

    in Troubleshooting

    Posted

    @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

     

    BigBox crash while sitting idle doing attract mode

    in Troubleshooting

    Posted

    1 minute ago, JohnnyK said:

    Yeah I have been trying to use "Restart on Crash"  which can be found below:

    https://w-shadow.com/blog/2009/03/04/restart-on-crash/

    But either I am an idiot, or it doesnt like the way that BigBox AND Launchbox has to be running to make it work.  

     

    I would love to see  your script!  Btw, on Hyperspin I had the same issue and had to use the HyperRefresh program that would auto shutdown and restart Hyperspin every 10 hours or so.  But with my luck the timer would always work out to restart the program in the middle of my kids playing the system.. it was annoying.  But if your script just relaunches after a crash.. yeah that would be great!

    Ofcourse the best scenario is they just fix this... it seems to be pretty clear what the issue is... ofcourse I am not a programmer so what do I know.  

    But yes, even if Launchbox came with a Disclaimer that said  "Hey, be warned.. we cant get videos to work"  I would still have switched as its much easier to use than hyperspin.  However if I find another program that can actually play videos and work without crashing I am TOTALLY READY to spend money for it.  I dont care if its $300  I just want someone to make a front end that works.

     

    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

    • Thanks 1

    BigBox crash while sitting idle doing attract mode

    in Troubleshooting

    Posted

    4 minutes ago, JohnnyK said:

    Update, last night before bed I removed ALL my video files from the folder... and for the first time since I installed Launchbox my system was not at windows desktop when I came to my machine in the morning.

    So for ME at least, its definitely the videos....  

    Things I have done (that havent helped)

    • downloaded the latest codecs (K-lite I think they were called)
    • Used both VLC and Windows to play the videos

     

    What I will try next

    • I am going to pick a chunk of 20 or so videos and see if it can play through the night tonight with those being added.  I have around 600 games, so I am hoping it will pick the games that have videos and we will see what happens.  

    Yep. It’s definitely the videos for me too. Something with how launchbox handles loading and unloading video files. It eventually just can’t keep up. Doesn’t matter how much computer hardware you throw at it. It’s software. 
     

    to work around the issue my bigbox launcher runs an ahk script that just keeps relaunching bigbox when it’s closed (or crashes) with a cancel button to keep it closed if that’s what you meant. I can share the script if you want to try it. I just gave up trying to have non-crashing software. At least bigbox is infinitely easier to setup then hyperspin ... it just is a super performance hog unfortunately 

    • Like 1
    • Thanks 1

    BigBox crash while sitting idle doing attract mode

    in Troubleshooting

    Posted

    26 minutes ago, megashub said:

    45 minutes in now and not a single blip during the spin on this test. That's a pretty stark contrast from the previous tests. Only thing I changed was the theme, which shifted the view to this covers-only wheel. The test is still running and I'll keep monitoring, but I think the next test should be a view using the Default theme that includes the videos, if one exists. Yes?

    It seems to only happens when videos are used (maybe just fullscreen video) and it doesn't matter what theme is used (unless the theme view has fullscreen video?)

    BigBox crash while sitting idle doing attract mode

    in Troubleshooting

    Posted

    Nice, I plan on adding a 2TB m.2 ssd one day. It should help with the bigbox wheel responsiveness hopefully. I'm running off a usb 3.0 external 2tb and loading new wheel images can sometimes lag blank for a few seconds.

    My 6th gen NUC actually can handle KI also, but I have to crank the resolution down to 720p and then some particle effects can cause a stutter. But still amazing for such a dated lil machine!

    BigBox crash while sitting idle doing attract mode

    in Troubleshooting

    Posted

    1 minute ago, megashub said:

    Using those m.2 ssds via the Internal m.2 slots. 

    Yep, and it is. This is a multicade build with some Windows/Steam games, console emulators, classic mame, v pinball (fx3, etc), and sinden lightguns (whenever they arrive), and front ports for USB controllers. I can play Tekken 7 via Steam, the Killer Instinct steam version, etc all just fine thanks to the integrated Radeon RX Vega M GL GPU.

    Ah ya! Sinden! i can't wait! I ordered 2 recoil guns. Super stoked!

    Ya, your NUC is a beast with the radeon graphics! bigbox should be child's play running off m.2 ssd drives.

    BigBox crash while sitting idle doing attract mode

    in Troubleshooting

    Posted

    I have a feeling BigBox doesn’t like onboard graphics like the intel iris the NUC has. 

    jason, do you ever test with low end gpu? These retro emulators, even up to PlayStation 2, run pretty well on these intel gpus, so they should have plenty of horsepower to run bigbox. 
     

    megashub, you running bigbox from external drive? Or on those m.2 ssd?

     

    your NUC is 2gens newer then mine so should be more then capable of playing even some of the latest AAA games 

    BigBox crash while sitting idle doing attract mode

    in Troubleshooting

    Posted

    4 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

    Wow. That is certainly possible. Might be worth at least temporarily removing those images to see if it makes any difference.

    another crash this time on 11.6 on the NUC (last crash after removing 'bogus' images was on my 8700 i7/1080ti rig)... 

    Faulting application name: BigBox.exe, version: 11.6.0.0, time stamp: 0x5ee99cfc
Faulting module name: ntdll.dll, version: 10.0.18362.1049, time stamp: 0xb5beef21
Exception code: 0xc0000374
Fault offset: 0x00000000000f9229
Faulting process id: 0x2ac0
Faulting application start time: 0x01d68e967776e434
Faulting application path: H:\Arcade\LaunchBox\Core\BigBox.exe
Faulting module path: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll
Report Id: 2d7a28a5-9bc9-4653-bfa9-97617a9974dc
Faulting package full name: 
Faulting package-relative application ID:

    there was a fault bucket error in the log just after. i attached it as well

    Report.wer

    BigBox crash while sitting idle doing attract mode

    in Troubleshooting

    Posted

    1 hour ago, Jason Carr said:

    Wow. That is certainly possible. Might be worth at least temporarily removing those images to see if it makes any difference.

    spoke too soon... just had a crash even with all those (attached list of 300 or so out of 14000+ good images) bogus images removed... 

    Faulting application name: BigBox.exe, version: 11.4.0.0, time stamp: 0x5ee99cfc
Faulting module name: ntdll.dll, version: 10.0.19041.488, time stamp: 0x70e69bad
Exception code: 0xc0000374
Fault offset: 0x00000000000fed79
Faulting process id: 0x5998
Faulting application start time: 0x01d68e44f565ae94
Faulting application path: H:\Arcade\LaunchBox\Core\BigBox.exe
Faulting module path: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll
Report Id: 9307b472-7433-4e33-b94d-9d215103f00a
Faulting package full name: 
Faulting package-relative application ID:

     

    badpeggy_list.txt

    BigBox crash while sitting idle doing attract mode

    in Troubleshooting

    Posted

    28 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

    Wow. That is certainly possible. Might be worth at least temporarily removing those images to see if it makes any difference.

    Yea I’ve already deleted the bogus images and have been running attract mode for about 12 hours without a crash yet. We shall see...

     

    the scary thing is, all these images were downloaded using launchbox’s database search either from wiki or emumovies. So doing another missing media search would potentially bring all the bogus images right back.  

    BigBox crash while sitting idle doing attract mode

    in Troubleshooting

    Posted

    1 hour ago, MrSco said:

    welp, i ran the ffmpeg script to test all the .mp4 files for corruption and they all checked out... no errors found. I did notice that some of the 30 video files are like 30MB... could bigbox be choking on too many videos at a larger size?  i may have asked this before but, When you run your tests are you running attract mode with videos for each game that the video plays fullscreen as the entire background? 

    i guess i can check the image files next to rule them out... anyone know a test for image corruption?

    @Jason Carr  could it be corrupt images causing the crashes? i found this Bad Peggy (https://superuser.com/a/1083216) program to scan all the image files and its only about halfway done but already found lots of errors ... the clear logo one in particular peaked my interest...

    6waSd4t.png

    BigBox crash while sitting idle doing attract mode

    in Troubleshooting

    Posted

    8 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

    Okay, well that rules that out. Still puzzled, and still haven't seen a legitimate crash. I did some testing recently to see if a corrupted video file would crash Big Box, and I could not get it to crash (but who knows, maybe a video file has to be corrupted in a certain way for it to crash). We have had a couple reports recently that corrupted video files can crash Big Box, so I wanted to do some testing there.

    Media is really the only thing we have left here though as a possibility, considering that it's happening on multiple machines, either that or we're missing something. It's a pain, but the only thing I can recommend at this point would be to try and temporarily remove media folders to see what folder might be causing the issue.

    welp, i ran the ffmpeg script to test all the .mp4 files for corruption and they all checked out... no errors found. I did notice that some of the 30 video files are like 30MB... could bigbox be choking on too many videos at a larger size?  i may have asked this before but, When you run your tests are you running attract mode with videos for each game that the video plays fullscreen as the entire background? 

    i guess i can check the image files next to rule them out... anyone know a test for image corruption?

    BigBox crash while sitting idle doing attract mode

    in Troubleshooting

    Posted

    1 hour ago, Jason Carr said:

    Okay, well that rules that out. Still puzzled, and still haven't seen a legitimate crash. I did some testing recently to see if a corrupted video file would crash Big Box, and I could not get it to crash (but who knows, maybe a video file has to be corrupted in a certain way for it to crash). We have had a couple reports recently that corrupted video files can crash Big Box, so I wanted to do some testing there.

    Media is really the only thing we have left here though as a possibility, considering that it's happening on multiple machines, either that or we're missing something. It's a pain, but the only thing I can recommend at this point would be to try and temporarily remove media folders to see what folder might be causing the issue.

    I'm running a script against all my video files with ffmpeg to see if it finds any corrupted videos. that should help rule out the media...

    https://superuser.com/a/1241089

    BigBox crash while sitting idle doing attract mode

    in Troubleshooting

    Posted

    16 minutes ago, Danabis said:

    Just a suggestion. I will leave it up to you guys to determine if this is a viable solution. It seems there could be many factors to chase here. It would seem there is a workaround for some.  I see mention of using AHK scripts or scheduled tasks. Maybe consider utilizing one of the workarounds as a optional feature in later releases? You could still chase this trouble but for those who are less technically inclined that may provide a more attractive choice.

    For example I have chased this one for a while. I get a crash usually around 48 hrs in attract mode and I have ever since it was introduced. I am not suggesting my solution is a good one as it has some security concerns but my setup is a dedicated arcade machine that I could remove from my network if I had any security concerns.  I currently have my machine setup to boot directly into windows  and skip any login. It will then launch bigbox at startup. I created a batch file with the windows restart command and used the task scheduler to scheduled it at 5am every morning when I am sure nobody will be on the machine. It works like a charm and helps clean up any other potentially problematic software that you sometimes run into with a machine running for long periods like steam for example.

    I see other mentions that may be easier to utilize as an option. Perhaps allowing the scheduling of bigbox to shut down and start up at different periods. Obviously this may not provide a good solution for those who crash less than 24hrs but perhaps a suggestion to consider including a work around in a future release for those who don't want to chase software issues. I feel like most of those who have this issue are of the post 24hr variety but obviously not all are. I am sure there are those way smarter than me who are using different work arounds that could be viable options that bigbox could control.

    Just a suggestion from a fellow nerd.

    nice, thats not a bad idea. I did another workaround a while back (these crashes have been happening since v10 for about a year or more now)...

    https://forums.launchbox-app.com/topic/52601-bigbox-crash-while-sitting-idle-doing-attract-mode/?do=findComment&comment=357277

    attached to this post is a more recent version of the startup script I use that has an automatic relaunch of bigbox with a countdown to cancel when bigbox is closed/crashes.

     

    Also, In case any one is wondering, yes, i tested bigbox.exe running directly and not through autohotkey startup scripts and it still crashes the same way.

    launchbox_scripts.zip

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