Jason Carr

Space Invaders is not a clone, so it should be imported straight up.

Thanks, found the issue and have it fixed for the next beta.

The performance issue was specifically with blurring images, which only happens in LaunchBox, so the issue that was resolved does not apply to Big Box at all.

Thank you both. It does look like we're dealing with two separate issues here. @MrSco It will be helpful to know whether you have the issue with those old versions. This is a slightly different fault offset number than the other error I was searching with, so that is helpful as well. I assume it was on a different system? @ItchyRobot That is telling because it's clearly a VLC issue. It's either a VLC bug, or a bug with the way we communicate with VLC. I'm guessing the latter. I'll dive in and see what I can figure out.

Tools > Refresh All Images in LaunchBox or Options > Image Cache > Refresh All Images in Big Box. I'm glad you guys caught this. Can you give me an example theme?

Thanks @ItchyRobot. A reboot shouldn't mess up the error log.

Beta 4 is out now with the following: Improvement: LaunchBox and Big Box disk usage footprints have been reduced by using a combination of JPG and PNG images for image caching, instead of just PNG images. Refresh your LaunchBox and Big Box image caches in order to reduce disk usage. Fixes for the new LEDBlinky features This beta is a release candidate; we're planning on putting out 11.5 as a quality of life release before tackling new features next week. Let us know if you run into any issues.

@Just001Kim Thanks, I can help resize those controls to fix those issues, but it would be best to get the translations updated first so I can see how best to place everything. Also, for translation-related stuff, it would be best to post it in the translations thread.

@MrSco Thanks. It is important to use the most up to date version if possible, yes. 11.4 would work, but 11.5-beta-2 would actually be better because we've fixed a number of issues with .NET Core. I did look at all the logs, yes. Sorry if I didn't respond. I haven't been through this whole thread in detail recently, though, and it's certainly easy to forget some of what we've discussed. I just took a look at the very first post, and noticed that you stated that it started with 10.7. That might be an important lead if we can determine that 10.6 does not have the issue. I can get you a copy of 10.6 if you need.

I need to know whether all of the numbers specifically are the same: Faulting module name: ntdll.dll, version: 10.0.18362.418, time stamp: 0x99ca0526 Exception code: 0xc0000374 Fault offset: 0x00000000000f9269 Faulting process id: 0x1c08 If not, it would very much help to see what the numbers are on the other systems. I understand that it's the same basic error, but the numbers are the key.

All I'm asking for is for you to confirm that error messages are the same on different machines...that's it. Can you help with that?

I can't help you if you're not willing to dive in deeper. I'm sorry for the issues, but we have thousands of users who do not have these issues at all, and I need your help to troubleshoot it. I don't care if "it's Big Box" or not, I just want to try and fix it. Unfortunately though, I still need your help to get a lead, or I'm stuck dead in the water. I can't fix anything if I don't know what exactly is broken.

That's right, same useless error unfortunately. When I Google that particular error, I get random junk about everything from Red Dead Redemption 2 to Photoshop and all kinds of stuff in between. The best suggestions I've found are to run the Microsoft System File Checker or to uninstall and reinstall ntdll.dll. https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/app-crash-with-ntdlldll/9aa59f80-99a1-4f3c-b2f0-7eb72df05b2a https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/faulting-module-name-ntdlldll/82a80b07-6d81-40f7-8aa6-b11f00098480 I honestly don't think uninstalling and reinstalling ntdll.dll will do any good, but running the system file checker might. Here's the thing, though, can you confirm that you get the same exact error on every machine you've tested it on? Because I'm doubtful that the error will be the same everywhere (that also might be an important clue). @ItchyRobot What errors are you seeing in the event log?

@ItchyRobot @MrSco Can you guys check your event viewer after a crash? Just type Event Viewer into the Start menu and that should load it up. Then go to Windows Logs (on the left), Application. There should be at least one Error entry related to the crash. If you can copy and paste me all that text, it might help me figure out why the crashes are occurring on your machines. There may be multiple entries that apply. LaunchBox logs may be helpful as well, though iirc I think we've exhausted those and they weren't giving me any clues. The more I think about this and look into it, the more I'm doubting that we're on the right path, especially if crashes are occurring in less than 15 minutes.

@tastyratz This has come up many times over the years, and my responses are all over the forums. There are very few performance issues that are actually with the data itself. Really, there aren't any. Delays come primarily from the media. If you run an import and turn off all image options, it goes lightning fast. Our code has been optimized many times over, and SQLite would not bring a significant performance benefit. I know, because for one thing, I have the code, and for another thing, I spent many years as a software consultant working with SQL Server, MySQL, and SQLite.

Glad you got it working, but there should be no need to throw out your work and use a prebuilt. There were no issues with any of the recent releases that caused any data loss, so if you still have it, you can probably fix whatever issues you were running into by installing over top.

@MrSco Alright, well, forgive me for forgetting about some of what we've gone over in the past. Unfortunately for legal reasons I can't have you mail me the drive. That said, your Data folder might have some clues in it, though I feel like you've probably sent it to me previously. I'll look. At this point though, you might be right that the issue is caused somehow by the data on the drive, if that seems to be the culprit/common ground. Maybe try temporarily renaming media folders to see if you can figure out where the issue is?

Beta 3 is out now with the following: Improvement: New LEDBlinky option to use advanced logic for filters lists in Big Box (primarily for addon devices); enabled under Tools > Options > Integrations > LEDBlinky in LaunchBox Improvement: New LEDBlinky option to disable starting the LEDBlinky screensaver when attract mode starts in Big Box; available under Tools > Options > Integrations > LEDBlinky in LaunchBox Improvement: LaunchBox performance improvements when blurring excessively large background images Fixed: The default emulator wasn't being automatically assigned when adding a game manually in the Add/Edit Game window Fixed: The MAME full set importer was not properly obeying the option to "Skip clones entirely" if checked

For the 11.5-beta-3 release, I've added some code in to resize images that are larger than the screen resolution before attempting to blur them. It does seem to significantly help performance with excessively large images.

I'm not an expert on NUC devices, but the NUC is likely an underpowered device when it comes to the GPU and RAM. 8 gigs unfortunately these days is rather underpowered for Windows 10. Even just Firefox as I'm typing this is taking up more than 4 gigs of RAM. I'm not sure what graphics it's running, but I would guess that they're fairly underpowered. Usually the issue comes more from the wheel scrolling so quickly during moving operations, and image caching, not catching up between moves. Yes, pretty much everyone uses clear logos, myself included. Come to think of it, could the issue be that the performance issues and/or crashes are caused by running it off of a slow-ish external drive? That might be worth testing.

Unfortunately I'm doubtful that having the drive would really help here; we've done enough testing to narrow it down to an operating system or hardware configuration/performance thing. I've done some more testing today and I think what's really happening is that Big Box just starts to eventually choke and die when the hardware can't keep up with attract mode. Especially on something like a Nuc, the hardware can get overwhelmed and the software starts falling behind pretty quickly. Attract mode runs on a timer, so if it queues up enough operations, eventually it'll just overflow and die if the hardware can't keep up. That's a serious challenge to fix, but the simplest thing to do would be to just slow attract mode down. It runs lightning fast currently, which may be the cause of crashes on lower-end systems. I'll look to add a setting for that here soon, which will hopefully help.

@Lahma Sorry for the added difficulty for plugins with the 11.4 release. I understand the frustration. I do wish the .NET Core upgrade had been a smoother experience, but I still feel that it was necessary, even with it being the major challenge that it was. Thanks for those helpful notes @JoeViking245. Let us know if they help you get back up and running @Lahma.

@lessthanzero33 Updating to the latest beta will likely fix this issue.

Windows 7 isn't optimized with the latest drivers or Microsoft optimizations, so that makes sense. Running Windows 7 at this point in time is definitely not recommended. It's back to the drawing board then with those crashes, which I still have not been able to replicate with any consistency. I was able to get Big Box to crash once after running attract mode for 4 or 5 days straight a couple weeks back, but that's all I've seen since. Unfortunately I didn't get any leads on what caused that particular crash, but we'll keep our eyes open for anything new to look into.