MrSco

@Jason Carr any incite gained from the debug logs?

I’m using Unified Redux, but I’ve tested two other themes including the default and they all crash the same way. there is indeed a reference to a missing png file though... FIRST CHANCE EXCEPTION: Could not find file 'H:\Arcade\LaunchBox\Themes\Unified Redux\Images\Theme\Pointer\.png'.

There are no errors or warnings in the event log that are related to the usb bus or hard drive so I seriously doubt the usb hdd is the cause. I’ve attached the Debut logs generated from the launch and crash of bigbox.exe Debug 2020-07-07 06-41-08 AM.log Debug 2020-07-07 06-43-20 AM.log

Definitely not trying to be combative, sorry it came off that way. I'm just frustrated as this has been happening since around v10. The NUC is a NUC6i7KYK https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/89187/intel-nuc-kit-nuc6i7kyk.html 8GB of ram. Intel® Iris® Pro Graphics 580. Intel® Core™ i7-6770HQ Processor (6M Cache, up to 3.50 GHz) My gaming rig it also crashes on is... an intel i7 8700k with 16gb ram GeForce 1080Ti GPU Both systems are running launchbox/bigbox from portable usb3.0 2TB mechanical hard drive (also tested different drives but same thing) I have bigbox.exe running again with performance monitor running in the background to see what the memory usage is. as far as the image cache pre-populating, i've done that a couple times before and it didn't help, but its been a while so could try again. also, shouldn't just leaving attract mode running cache the images as it scrolls through them all eventually? what do you need me to do to get the bigbox.exe debug log? what else can i provide?

I’ve already said I’ve reproduced the issue across multiple systems. Some that are way more powerful then the NUC, which itself is PLENTY powerful to run a loop of videos, sounds and scrolling images. So it’s extremely doubtful that it’s hardware related at this point. All signs point to bigbox.exe...

@Retro808 is this the entry you get in the event viewer? it sounds like the same issue me and my other friend's test systems are having. this has been happening since launchbox v9 i think... years. if hyperspin wasn't such a pain in the ass to use.... man i miss how lightweight and nimble that thing was... but horrid to configure.

I've reproduced the crash on 3 different systems each with plenty of ram (8GB and 16GB). an intel NUC 6th gen with 8GB, a core i7 8700k with 16GB ram, and a core i5 6th gen laptop with 8GB ram. I haven't tried monitoring ram usage as the system is idle by the time i see that bigbox is no longer running. you have a recommended method for monitor/logging the RAM usage to look at later? thanks for the help!

Well I just did some more testing. I formatted my intel NUC and reinstalled windows 10 x64 1909 with the latest updates And the latest launchbox update v11. Volume2 wasn’t installed or running.... BigBox still crashes after 4 hours in attract mode. I’ve tested multiple machines now of various configurations and BigBox always crashes... could be 4 hours...could be 40 hours, but it always crashes. @Jason Carr there must be a memory leak or some other glitch in bigbox with the artwork I’m using or something. Could I send you a link to my hard drive image so you can test maybe?

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! bigbox-crash-after-3-hours.mp4

I figured out my own issue with nircmd screensavertimeout and autohotkey

Windows 10 fully updated.

VLC

@Jason Carr any updates or incite? Could it be a funky video file (Or some other game library related file?) that attract mode is randomly switching to to play and crashes?

Anyway to have bigbox attract mode disable the windows screensaver while it’s running? I tried doing this manually with nircmd but it doesn’t seem to work.

@Jason Carr My main theme is Unified Redux 1.8 (latest version), but i've tested with the Default theme and the same crashes happen.

@Jason Carr I've done some more testing on the latest version 10.14, on different machines and with the default theme enabled, and BigBox.exe always crashes after a random amount of time (the quickest being around 2 hours and the longest around 23 hours). Here are the errors from the event log... First error Event 1026, .NET Runtime Application: BigBox.exe Framework Version: v4.0.30319 Description: The process was terminated due to an unhandled exception. Exception Info: exception code c0000005, exception address 00007FFA7C4BC474 Stack: Error immediately after: Event 1000, Application Error Faulting application name: BigBox.exe, version: 10.14.0.0, time stamp: 0x5ea063fe Faulting module name: ntdll.dll, version: 10.0.18362.778, time stamp: 0x0c1bb301 Exception code: 0xc0000005 Fault offset: 0x000000000003c474 Faulting process id: 0x48cc Faulting application start time: 0x01d61917464827dc Faulting application path: H:\Arcade\LaunchBox\BigBox.exe Faulting module path: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll Report Id: dbed4157-aaba-414d-95a6-e42f416c6d41 Faulting package full name: Faulting package-relative application ID:

@Jason Carr well I think I jinxed it... BigBox finally crashed to the desktop after about 23 hours of running in attract mode. ☹️

I just installed and fired up the 10.11-beta-2 last night and so far about 12 hours and counting and no crashes... looking pretty solid but I don’t wanna jinx it lol. Good work! what did you change?!

@Jason Carr this is all thats in the error log when bigbox crashes...

that is interesting... I did some more testing and I think it might be related to controllers for me as well... One of the scripts I launch along with bigbox on startup is an autohotkey script that polls for xbox 360 controller connects/disconnects. I use bigbox on my bartop arcade and it has built-in xinmo 2 arcade sticks/buttons. the autohotkey script disables the xinmo usb device via devcon.exe when it detects an xbox 360 controller is connected. this is done so the 360 controller is player 1 instead of player 3, since controllers get assigned priority based on when they are connected/plugged in. since the xinmo is always hardwired into the bartop, the only option is to programmatically disable it so the xbox controller can be player 1 and reenable it when xbox controller disconnects so xinmo is player 1 and 2. my guess is the autohotkey code that loops and polls for 360 controller connects/disconnects is maybe conflicting with bigbox's controller polling? also if someone has a better idea to handle always connected arcade sticks and connecting/disconnecting wireless 360 controllers I'm all ears and would love suggestions. the only other idea i had was to do a physical hardware switch that somehow "unplugs" the xinmo usb wire from the computer.

@Jason Carr I think I narrowed down the instability to using autohotkey script to launch bigbox. I use an autohotkey script at Windows logon using task scheduler (regular user non-elevated) to launch bigbox and that seems to be causing the crashes after 2-4 hours... any suggestions? a nice feature suggestion for LaunchBox/bigbox would the ability to set external scripts/exe’s to launch along with and close when LaunchBox/bigbox is closed.

Yea. I haven’t had a chance to tweak that yet. I’ve been too stuck on getting my setup to transition from game to bigbox and back to game with proper controller mappings etc while not losing focus and control so user needs to grab a keyboard or mouse. It’s been a challenge to say the least. I finally caved and set a hot key for alt+tab using xpadder as a fallback in case focus from bigbox gets lost.

Ah indeed. Definitely a task keeping things simple for the guests. I haven’t messed with it yet but I think LaunchBox supports the Xbox guide button now for single press pause menu invocation no?

This is very similar to the behavior I experience with retroarch and bigbox. And ya it is a bummer cause I’d like to use the LB pause screen but I may have to disable and use retroarch hotkeys. im using a Intel NUC NUC6i7KYK. 8Gb ram and 120GB ssd. Running LaunchBox on external 2tb mechanical hard drive. what rig are you running on?

i have this focus issue with RetroArch. Alt+tab won't bring the pause screen to the foreground though. The pause screen shows on top in focus the first time its triggered but then after that, it shows up in the background and can't be pulled into focus. but its still able to be interacted with. This only occurs with BigBox... LaunchBox doesn't seem to have the issue and the pause screen always shows on top in focus. RetroArch is the only emulator that seems to have this issue as well. Is there a solution to this? @Jason Carr I really don't want to have to disable pause screens for retroarch as thats the emulator i use for the majority of my platforms and i really like the save/load state and pause functionality when it works... Mame handles it like a dream and its awesome to pause arcade games that can't normally be paused, save state and load back up again later.