Jason Carr

Ah, good to know. Can you link me to a page with code tags in it?

Hey all, I just upgraded the forums to the latest version of the forums software. It was a major undertaking, so let me know if anyone notices any issues with the new version or the updated themes. It is worth noting that if you were using a theme other than the default (LaunchBox Invaders), you'll most likely need to select it again via the Theme drop down at the very bottom of the page.

Feel free to create your own thread @ultrez.

@G22 Ah, okay, good to know.

FYI all; the latest version of LaunchBox (11.9) should do the vast majority of what folks need for a MAME importer (Lightspeed shouldn't really be necessary anymore, as the MAME full-set importer handles pretty much everything). If not, please tell me what LaunchBox is missing.

Yes, everything requested in this thread can be done already. If you want to tag certain games with something (anything, really), use a custom field. Then there's also auto-populate playlists.

I will take a look at the theme to see if I can figure it out. If we can identify that it's definitely the theme that is the issue, then you can let me know what view(s) and I'll take a look. Did you download the theme from inside of the Big Box Themes Manager? Or did you get it from the forums?

Yes, definitely. That's good news though. At least we're starting to narrow it down. I would test one of the vertical wheel views next. A wheel view with a video in there somewhere as well.

We definitely have run into various similar issues elsewhere for various users, but they are nearly always caused by one of the following: A background app that is somehow interfering Anti-virus or security software Faulty or buggy drivers (especially video drivers) A corrupted .NET, .NET Core, or Windows installation These issues are usually solved here on the forums. It's still possible that your issue @megashub has nothing to do with the Nuc at all, so I would recommend the following to troubleshoot: Try closing all background apps Try disabling any third-party anti-virus or security software Try updating any and all drivers (especially video drivers) Make sure you're up to date on Windows updates (but don't jump to Microsoft's beta releases)

Yes, they do look to be high performance machines. Yes, it is likely to be a software problem, but we haven't been able to narrow it down. Attract Mode is most definitely fully unloading the media and letting go of those resources, yes. We've put massive efforts into performance optimization and testing there over the years, and I regularly run multi-week long tests on various machines with zero issues for weeks on end. That's why this thread has thrown me for a loop so much. There seems to be something on these Nuc systems that is changing things up, and I don't know what that is. I also don't know if all Nuc systems are affected, or if it just happens to be an issue with some configuration on these systems.

We have experienced issues in the past with several other anti-virus apps, but generally, none of them have caused as many issues as Norton has. That said, we specifically recommend Windows Defender because it offers plenty of protection without causing massive performance issues or reporting ridiculous false positives. The consensus out there that "it's not good enough" is largely a bunch of lies and misinformation that is spread around by the various third-party anti-virus providers. I'm getting into the weeds here, but most third-party anti-virus providers prey on users by spreading fear. One way that they do this is by introducing false positives. Users often think that their anti-virus product works better simply because it magically finds a "virus" and removes some files. Unfortunately, the majority of the viruses that are reported these days are false positives, and no anti-virus provider is ever held responsible for reporting any false positives. Microsoft has largely come in and saved the day by introducing Windows Defender, simply because they don't have an agenda, or at least not an anti-virus agenda that is bad for consumers (we won't get into the other issues with Microsoft here lol). They just want Windows to work safely and properly, and obviously they know how to do it best because they develop the OS.

To clarify this a bit, we've been fighting with Norton/Symantec for many versions. Every single time we come out with a new version, Norton finds some kind of false positive to complain about. It may not be a "bad product" in some sense, but it's like the boy who cried wolf. If it screams at the drop of a hat over nothing, then you'll never be able to trust it when you have an actual virus. The issues you're experiencing (or experienced) here @thykingviking had everything to do with Norton, and are only experienced in that case. We highly recommend uninstalling Norton, because it will only continue to cause you problems.

It is possible that Big Box is pushing the CPUs in the Nucs to their limits (at least on one particular core), and causing heat issues, which slows down the CPUs. Perhaps that is causing it to lag behind? I have figured out that if attract mode lags behind too much, Big Box will eventually crash with a stack overflow, so that could be what's going on here. I'm no expert on the Nucs, but my guess is that they're running mobile/laptop CPUs? I know that usually those CPUs have settings in the BIOS to control performance, but I'm not sure if that's only on laptops. I do know, however, that even on brand new Intel laptops, if I don't adjust the performance settings, I end up with terrible performance out of the box (at least when running on battery power). No idea if that's relevant to the Nucs, but I thought I'd mention it.

@megashub Thanks for the details. It is interesting that you and @MrSco are both running Nucs (even if the generations are different) and are both running into issues (though I'm not sure how similar they are). I haven't tested on a Nuc, but I have tested with integrated Intel graphics on my laptop. But it sounds like it might not be related to the graphics, since @megashub is using Radeon graphics, so I don't know. How much RAM do you have @megashub? Can you try running the Big Box default theme for a bit to see if it happens to be a theme issue?

Yeah, I'm not sure what causes this temporarily for people (I think it's some app interfering with the LaunchBox files somehow), but generally, rebooting fixes it.

That's not something I would worry about personally, but I'm not an expert enough on that subject to guarantee that it won't cause issues with any emulators. I do know it won't be an issue with LaunchBox or Big Box.

Okay, it could be interference from a background app, or it could be some kind of stray controller as well. Unfortunately it's likely to take some troubleshooting work to get it figured out. I would start by disconnecting any controllers and closing any background apps to see if either of those happen to be the issue.

Unfortunately I need to focus on dev, so I can't create a detailed tutorial for you, but just right-click on something in the platform categories sidebar and select Add > New Playlist. Then go to the Auto-Populate tab, check the box, and put in your filters.

Odd; I'm guessing that the sporadic thing is also related to the stack overflow crash. I don't think it's related to the new version. I could be wrong, but it looks like a configuration issue somehow. Did you happen to change themes recently? What theme are you running there? Have you tried rebooting?

@wallmachine That's just because there's not enough space to display everything with that resolution. Even at 100% scaling, 840 pixels wide isn't quite large enough. There may be some funky things going on with your data files, unfortunately. I know we've seen some similar things in the past. I can take a look if you zip up and PM me your data files.

New stuff that just got approved won't work its way into LaunchBox downloads until: The server updates the LaunchBox metadata during a nightly operation The LaunchBox app downloads new metadata Therefore, it could take up to a full day before you'll receive the changes in the LaunchBox app (and even then you'll need to force downloading updated metadata to make sure that the changes are downloaded).

@megashub Were you having this issue with previous versions? What version did you have installed before updating to 11.9? I'm running some stability testing on 11.9 to make sure that we didn't introduce any new stability issues. That error is a stack overflow error, which could be a programming error, or it could be that the hardware couldn't keep up. Could you give me details on your hardware and your Windows version?

There shouldn't be an ending slash there. Not sure if that's the issue or not.

Correct, the star rating popup is unfortunately not themeable yet, though it would be fairly easy for us to enable it. That's probably the only really realistic solution (making it themeable). I have made some of the popups themeable recently, but I haven't gotten to all of them yet.

Please try the below: That should work fine to get it to work. If it doesn't, then something is going wrong in configuring the account, or you have the wrong custom URL.