LB very slow/unuseable after import

[Retrofrogg]

Thanks Lordmonkus - but if it was my system, wouldn't the other emulated systems be affected too?

[Lordmonkus]

It depends, computer can be weird things at times.

Having been around computers building and fixing them for approx 20 years I have seen the strangest things cause seemingly random unrelated issues.

Bad drivers or some other piece of shit software that gets installed unknowingly can cause issues but only in specific circumstances.

[Retrofrogg]

OK....do you have any suggestions? Is there somewhere I can get help with this?

[neil9000]

Have you tried upping the Ram cache in Tools/Options/Ram cache? You mention this happens on MAME and Exodus, both of those platforms will have thousands of games in them, so a lot of data and images to load.

[Lordmonkus]

1 minute ago, Dan said:

OK....do you have any suggestions? Is there somewhere I can get help with this?

Start here with some basic steps:

 

[ckp]

I didn't read the entire post, but LB/BB will seem slow when it's caching the image art. In LB you must actually scroll through EVERYTHING manually to get it all cached. For BB there is a setting to force the cache. In both cases it takes time, but once it's done, performance should be fine. Can it auto cache automatically for everything until done -> no it doesn't. Do I wish it would -> yes, i do, but it doesn't. It used to a very long time ago when I first started using LB, but since certain performance improvements were made, you must manually scroll.

If you want to know if LB is still caching files, you can open up task manager, click the resource monitor, then watch the disk usage WRITES for processes launchbox.exe and bigbox.exe. If it shows it's doing writes to Launchbox\images\cache then it is still caching.

It can take time to force all the image caching, but once done, I've found things work well.

[Retrofrogg]

ckp - yeah, I'm familiar with the issues around cacheing, though this just didn't seem to be a cacheing issue to me. LB itself was misbehaving - stalling/going full screen/not responding every few seconds. I had previously left it on overnight to see if it WAS a cacheing issue, though in the morning it was exactly the same with no extra art having appeared.

[Retrofrogg]

Lordmonkus - my machine is: intel i7-6700HQ CPU @2.60GHz / 16GB RAM / AMD Radeon Pro 450 / SSD / 64bit Windows10. 6100 games total in LB, around 4500 of which are the troublesome MAME ones. Same issue in BB - other systems work absolutely fine, arcade/MAME section runs slow.

I took a look at the "speeding up LB performence" link. I don't think that the problem is with my PC's performance - everything else is absolutely fine (including the other systems in LB). It doesn't seem like a performance issue that I am experiencing. It seems that something is going wrong with the LB behaviour at this point.

As you had initially advised, I did/do think that the problem may have been with the Lightspeed importer. I followed your instructions to reverse the process though wonder if there is anything else I maybe should have done in that regard?

Edited January 22, 2018 by Dan

[ckp]

I didn't realize your performance issues were only with the MAME platform. Something must really be causing LB/BB issues there then. Just removing and reimporting the games won't help if it's at all related to any of you custom metadata and/or image files.

As a test you might trying simply installing LB to a brand new folder and importing MAME to it "normally". If that doesn't cause any performance issues, and I don't think it will, then at least you have an option.

Also, leaving LB run overnight doesn't help it cache. It only caches when scrolling through the games, and a little time after, but not hours.

[Retrofrogg]

Well, I followed the above advice and installed a fresh instance of LB in a new folder, then added my MAME ROM folder (without any metadata, like I had done previously with the original LB). And it works! I have also added some metadata to some games and it works fine.

So what might be wrong with my original LB install? I don't want to have to install all my systems again, but I really want to add MAME.

[DOS76]

copy the Arcade.xml from your one installs data folder and place it in your other installs data folder or vice versa with your other platforms but if you do it the other way you will need to move your image folder also.

[Retrofrogg]

Thanks DOS76 - I copied the new arcade.xml and over-wrote the old one in the original directory. I startup up the original LB, and ....... same problem! The arcade menus appear, but the problem is the same as above!

[DOS76]

so if you remove the xml again is it no longer slow?

[Retrofrogg]

Yes...well....if I remove it, then the arcade folders aren't there to be slow! The other systems run fine.

If I have the arcade folders there, they run (browse) v v slow but the other systems run fine.

[DOS76]

yeah I don't know see if adding your other platforms to your new version makes any difference although I'm doubtful it will

 

[Retrofrogg]

I could add the other platforms to the new version, and I'm guessing that will be OK (as the arcade set is OK on the new version) - but I would rather avoid that if possible as I had spent some time settings up these platforms on the old version!

[neil9000]

you can just copy the platform xml's and the image/video/games folders into the new install, it should just work.

[Retrofrogg]

Would that work? What about all the settings, wouldn't I have to change those too?

[neil9000]

you mean bigbox and launchbox settings? they are in the main data folder and can be copied over as well settings.xml and bigboxsettings.xml.

[Retrofrogg]

OK, that is certainly an option. But is there no way to "fix" my existing LB? It does seem that the problem began after I ran the Lightspeed Importer. Theoretically, if I could undo whatever it did then shouldn't my LB be back to normal and functioning as the new install does? Lordmonkus advised to remove all the arcade games from the arcade platforms, delete the arcade platforms from the data\platforms folder and the backups folder. I did that and tried to re-import but the problem remains. I wonder if there is something else I have to "undo"?