Big Box incorrectly thinks mame exited

[dlf]

I put together a new windows machine with Big Box for MAME. While playing a game, big box will sometimes grab focus (as if it thinks mame has exited) and thus mame goes to the background. If I use big box to select a new game, it launches *another* mame instance. If you win-tab you can get back to the first mame instance. It's bizarre.

I think I've only seen this happen once per launch, and usually within the first few minutes of playing. I'm wondering if it's something on the system that is causing a hiccup, but I've no idea what would cause big box to think that the mame process has died. I've seen this both before and after I configured the machine to run bigbox on startup; before and after I set big box as the system shell; before and after I set bigbox to "hide the taskbar".

If anyone has any ideas I'd be grateful! I'm all out of them.

[Lordmonkus]

Possibly something like MSI Afterburner, I have seen reports of that causing some issues but I don't use it so I cannot confirm it does or doesn't.

[dlf]

My box is stock windows 7 pro (64bit). Dell optiplex 9020M. No add ons, no additional software installed (beyond chrome), no separate video card.

[Lordmonkus]

Very strange, not sure what to say since I have not experienced this at all on my 2 systems. Maybe someone else will see this and have an idea.

[DOS76]

I have this issue with MAME on one of my machines except its multiple monitors so BB doesn't come back on to the screen it just takes over the input from my controller I don't have a clue what causes it either.

[Lordmonkus]

I have a multi monitor setup and this doesn't happen so I don't think it is that, it could be but it doesn't happen for me.

[DOS76]

yeah does not occur on my other multiple monitor setup

[SeaJayWild]

Are you using the default Mame Keybindings?   Those things are awful.  Having a keystrokes for alt and ctrl is just begging for some keyboard combo to get through to the OS and do a "windows shortcut thing".   I had quite a few issues with MAME losing focus and switching back to the Front-End--hyperspin at the time. Rebinding the player one buttons to alpha keys eliminated the problem for me.

[DOS76]

I'm using a controller so no keyboard bindings

 

Edited September 22, 2017 by DOS76

[dlf]

Thanks everyone. I went into windows and disabled a ton of services launched on startup and the problem went away. So one of those was causing the issue. I still get a weird performance stutter sometimes, but I'm not losing focus now. Blame windows.

[Lordmonkus]

When and where is the stutter happening ?

[dlf]

Typically very early during my first mame gameplay session. It only happens once. It may also be system related as I usually play right after boot. Since Windows isn't actually done with startup when you can first use the system, who knows...

[Lordmonkus]

Yeah it might be a case of Windows still doing shit in the back ground.

I was thinking maybe if it was seemingly random through out gameplay in Mame that maybe turning the "sleep" option off. What that option does is it throttles the CPU when Mame doesn't need all the CPU power to play a game but when it hits a point in the game where it needs more power it ramps the CPU back up and this can cause stutter issues.

[dlf]

BTW, I had remembered incorrectly. The issue didn't go away until I updated all the Dell drivers (using the Dell update), which included the firmware.