LB very slow/unuseable after import

[Retrofrogg]

I just imported a bunch of MAME roms & metadata via the Lightspeed importer. 3473 games in all, split into a few different arcade systems.

Problem is, LB has since become so slow it is unuseable. After clicking on a platform there is about a 15-20 second delay before the games appear, and then they load slowly one by one. LB intermittently shows as "not responding" on Windows resource monitor, though CPU usage for LB is not particulalry high. Big Box is also correspondingly slow. The NES and SNES consoles I already had in LB are about the same speed as before I think (some manageable delay in LB, but no delay in BB).

Any help appeciated!!

Edited December 25, 2017 by Dan

[Lordmonkus]

It most likely just needs some time to cache all the new images.

[Retrofrogg]

OK....leave it on overnight kind of thing? It would be handy if LB gave some indication of what it was doing behind the scenes (e.g. cacheing), rather than leaving the user to guess.

Edited December 25, 2017 by Dan

[Lordmonkus]

It shouldn't need anywhere near much time, you can help it along by going to each platform and scrolling through it.

And those different arcade systems are just playlists which you can get rid of if you want. To do this quickly, close Launchbox and go to your \LaunchBox\Data\Playlists\ folder and delete the playlists. Restart Launchbox and all your Arcade games will be under a single Arcade platform.

[Retrofrogg]

Do you have to scroll through them all or is there a way to make LB do it in the background? Scrolling would take hours at this rate!

[Lordmonkus]

It really shouldn't take that long unless something really weird is happening or your computer is really slow but you can check out this thread and maybe there is something there to help you out.

There was a time when the more games you added to your collection caused things to really slow down but that has long been fixed unless you have a giant collection of like 75,000+ games or something. A few thousand games is nothing and shouldn't be causing any issues.

[Retrofrogg]

It's causing major issues - LB goes into not responding every 10 seconds or so and every game is taking ages to appear in LB.

To be clear - the laptop is running fine - other apps run at normal speed. It's only LB which is going into a seizure

Going to bed now so will leave it on overnight. Hopefully it will be sorted by the morning.

Edited December 25, 2017 by Dan

[DOS76]

I believe I saw something about this before and it may have to do with the amount of textual metadata lightspeed downloads.

[Retrofrogg]

Interesting....so maybe letting it run overnight will remedy the issue after all? 

[Retro808]

@Lordmonkus Isnt there a warning about this program in the original thread and it possibly causing damage to xml files? Could it be the program broke something and is causing his issues? I have never used this program and reading through some of that thread it seems to be kind of obselete now. 

Edited December 25, 2017 by Retro808

[Lordmonkus]

Yup there is a warning about using this and it shouldn't be used.

[neil9000]

funny you should mention that.

 

[Retrofrogg]

Well, I left it overnight, hoping that it was just cacheing images or something - and the exact same situation this morning For reference, I didn't use the latest version of Lightspeed but a previous one, as we are recommended to do in the lightspeed thread.

Having read the above few posts, my next questions are;

- how can i "undo" what Lightspeed has done?

- how can I import MAME into LB with splitting into the various arcade categories like Lightspeed does?

Edited December 26, 2017 by Dan

[Lordmonkus]

Remove all your games from the Arcade platform and any of the platforms Light-Speed may have created and then just to be sure, close Launchbox and go into your \LaunchBox\Data\Platforms\ folder and delete any "Arcade" platforms created by Light-Speed. You also may want to go to your \LaunchBox\Backups\ folder and delete any backup Arcade xmls there that Light-Speed might have created.

Then load Launchbox and all those Arcade platforms created by Light=Speed should be gone. Next import your Mame rom set like any other platform but when importing them using the Mame emulator you should get to a screen that looks like this:

Here you can filter out all the stuff you don't want and prioritize the stuff you do want. And at the very bottom you see there is a check box to create the separate playlists.

Hopefully this all works for you, I don't know for certain if it will solve your slowdown issue because I have never had to do this myself.

[Retrofrogg]

Thanks so much Lordmonkus. LB running OK again with those removed. I will add them via the above method tonight.

[Lordmonkus]

Good to hear it's working good for you now.

[Retrofrogg]

I just added them the way you described above (and without downloading any metadata or images) - and I am having the exact same problem! Launchbox keeps freezing every few seconds, making it impossible to navigate!

[Lordmonkus]

Something really odd is going on with your system then.

[Retrofrogg]

Evidently! Any advice on how to investigate/fix this? The other systems I have so far (MSDOS/exodos, NES and SNES) are fine.

Edited January 20, 2018 by Dan

[Lordmonkus]

Without knowing your systems specs and what other stuff you have running on your PC it's impossible to tell. I can only point to the performance thread linked earlier in the thread and making sure your system is running properly without too much unnecessary software running in the background possibly hogging ram and CPU cycles.