Good tips guys. CKP, Rocketlauncher by itself does the same thing, so it's good to know it's not Launchbox causing this.... JayThompson, 7z WAS enabled, I disabled it, and now it doesn't bring up the browser, and only the ARCADE FADE-IN Screen appears, with the YEAR showing on bottom left...showing stats, total time played on the top right, etc...and other stuff there....but it remains BLACK...
Conclusion: However I somehow got it to work because of these steps and fiddling around with possibly some settings in the MAME.INI! Thanks guys! I wish I could retrace how it got fixed, but it seems fine now...
IF ONLY MY CONTROLLERS would work now....hitting TAB and trying to set up INPUTS doesn't detect either my snes pad (buffalo) or my wired XBOX 360 controller...Hmmmmm