[Solved] BigBox performance issues over time (When returning from games)

[Zaazu]

Update:

My problem is fixed. In case anyone else is having the same issues, I changed the video backend from VLC to Windows Media Player and that immediately solved the problem. You might need to restart BigBox for changes to take effect.

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Hi,

I'm having performance issues with BigBox that get worse over time.
The program runs fine at first, the menu is snappy and responsive, then over time as more games are played the performance gets worse, the menus become slower, videos take longer to load and overall it becomes difficult to navigate the menu.
Restarting BigBox solves the problem until it gets bad again, where it'll need to be restarted once again.

I've read the performance thread and done the following:
- Defraged HDD's
- Updated Drivers
- Disabled background images
- Reduced image quality to medium
 

I believe the PC should be more than capable of running BigBox, any help is appreciated, thanks.

PC Specs:

Windows 10 Enterprise 2016 LTSB 64-bit
Intel i5 7600 @ 3.5Ghz
16GB DDR4 Ram
ASRock H270M-ITX/ac
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050ti 4GB
500GB M.2 SSD (Boot/Launchbox & Media)
2TB HDD (Steam Games)
8TB HDD (ROMs)

Edit:

I recorded a demo so you can see what I mean. Runs normally until 3:45, then starts to get bad. Runs really bad at 4:45. Restart at 5:30 then it runs fine again.

Edit2:

Task Manager when it goes super slow

Edited January 20, 2019 by Zaazu

[Zaazu]

Bump

[Kondorito]

When it starts lagging like that, if you open the task manager is there any program taking memory or cpu to the max? 

[Mr. RetroLust]

Have you tried "clean up media"? This gave me quite a performance boost as I had a huuuuge amount of images from different sources when I started out with my collection. Another thing that could help is allowing launchbox to completely cache your media, select all games/refresh selected images and see the small line/cache indicator in the top of the screen, you can let launchbox do its work and wait till the indicator dissapears, feels quite snappy afterwards but you might have done these steps already, just thought I mention them as you never know.

[Zaazu]

41 minutes ago, Kondorito said:

When it starts lagging like that, if you open the task manager is there any program taking memory or cpu to the max? 

BigBox uses a lot of CPU when it gets slow.

 

19 minutes ago, Mr. RetroLust said:

Have you tried "clean up media"? This gave me quite a performance boost as I had a huuuuge amount of images from different sources when I started out with my collection. Another thing that could help is allowing launchbox to completely cache your media, select all games/refresh selected images and see the small line/cache indicator in the top of the screen, you can let launchbox do its work and wait till the indicator dissapears, feels quite snappy afterwards but you might have done these steps already, just thought I mention them as you never know.

I haven't tried cleaning up media, however I only tick the stuff I need so I don't think that'll fix anything. I've also cached all wheel images, not the others though. It's just strange that it only gets bad from returning to BigBox from playing games.

[DOS76]

If you have Window 10 try turning off game mode or game bar whatever they call it also if you have Nvidia software installed try turning that off its been know to cause issues.

[Zaazu]

42 minutes ago, DOS76 said:

If you have Window 10 try turning off game mode or game bar whatever they call it also if you have Nvidia software installed try turning that off its been know to cause issues.

I'm running Windows 10 LTSB 2016 so I don't have game mode, also the only nvidia software running is the control panel, not geforce experience

[Kondorito]

@DOS76, did not know game mode affected performance; supposed to be the other way around right?

@Zaazu I have LTSC 2019 and it has game mode. 

[DOS76]

well I've read about the game mode stuff I actually use it myself and don't have issues but its something to look into if you are having performance issues

 

[Zaazu]

Not sure what to do now, I defo don't have game mode.

[Mr. RetroLust]

You should be able to get much better performance if you let launchbox cache everything first, caching only wheel images wouldn't be enough for it to load faster, as far as I understand it big box will be busy every time loading things that haven't been cached in this case, if all is cached then big box can slow down it's loading cycles giving more room to make it navigate smoothly. But I think others could explain this better in technical terms and proper english than I can.

[Kondorito]

8 hours ago, Zaazu said:

Not sure what to do now, I defo don't have game mode.

Sorry Zaazu I was going to say the same as Lust; to force cache on all images (takes a couple of minutes to process depending on the amount of games you have, but definitely worth it). Besides that, I am out of ideas.

[Zaazu]

Hi all,

I've synced all the images, didn't make a difference, I'm pretty sure somethings wrong with the program to be honest. When it goes slow this is what my task manager looks like, I think you guys can agree that this isn't normal:

 

The problem only occurs when returning from playing a game, so something about that is causing issues.

Edited January 19, 2019 by Zaazu

[Lordmonkus]

Are you using any plugins for LB/BB ?

What you are showing in your screenshots is definitely not right at all and I have never seen that happen in the 3+ years I have been using LB.

I'm also wondering if those AHK and Input Mapper processes I see running are interfering with LB somehow. I know they are their own processes and all but if you have them tied to things in LB/BB they could be getting hung up in BB causing issues.

[Zaazu]

1 minute ago, Lordmonkus said:

Are you using any plugins for LB/BB ?

What you are showing in your screenshots is definitely not right at all and I have never seen that happen in the 3+ years I have been using LB.

I'm also wondering if those AHK and Input Mapper processes I see running are interfering with LB somehow. I know they are their own processes and all but if you have them tied to things in LB/BB they could be getting hung up in BB causing issues.

I'm not using any plugins whatsoever right now, I do however use rlauncher, but im looking to get rid of it soon in favour of wootlauncher. I'll disable inputmapper and AHK and see if that's the problem.

[Lordmonkus]

Keep in mind I am only guessing here because like I said, I have never seen that behaviour from LB/BB.

[Zaazu]

1 minute ago, Lordmonkus said:

Keep in mind I am only guessing here because like I said, I have never seen that behaviour from LB/BB.

I appreciate the help but just tested with no AHK/InputMapper and I still have the same issue. Makes no sense to me.

[Mr. RetroLust]

Are you running bigbox within something like Kodi? Have you tried different emulators? If you did was there a difference in the slowdown of Bigbox? Have you tried disabling start and shutdown screens? Another thing you could maybe try is disabling all updates see if this will slow it down and try letting big box do it's thing for like 30 minutes, perhaps it is still caching something or something in the cache was corrupt and it might help in this situation to delete the current cache and let it cache again. Besides these I really don't know what else you can do, except maybe in options turn off using all controllers as well so you use only a single controller. ps Of all these things you can try in combination with eachother, have you also tried changing the theme to a different one?

[Kondorito]

@Zaazu try launching Windows in Safe Mode and see if the problem persists. 

[flatuswalrus]

Hey, just a quick question regarding caching images in BB. If I do it but then never alter anything as in add games etc is it something I need to do again? As in, is it something that benefits from doing every once in a while or only when a bunch of new games and stuff has been added to the setup?