MrSco Posted December 3, 2019 Author Share Posted December 3, 2019 well i've been running BigBox now for about 4+ hours and no crashes yet. Usually it would have crashed multiple times (after restarts) by now. The change? I had some autohotkey scripts and xpadder.exe running in the background on boot... i disabled those and just ran BigBox.exe only. one of the autohotkey scripts is used to launch xpadder and bigbox at boot... the other is for some custom controller monitoring to be able to use either the wireless xbox controller or the built-in bartop joystick controls as the first player (toggles the bartop xinmo joysticks enabled/disabled using devcon.exe). i'm not sure which autohotkey script is the issue, or if bigbox doesn't like xpadder running in background? what are you guys using to launch bigbox and other exe's at computer bootup in a silent, clean, hidden manner? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wallmachine Posted December 4, 2019 Share Posted December 4, 2019 (edited) On 12/3/2019 at 7:36 AM, Jason Carr said: @wallmachine Looks like you might be dealing with issues caused by an audio device getting removed or disabled, or something of that nature. I'm going to see if I can make that code more robust in that situation, but if I had to guess based on your logs, that'd be my guess (at least for that one situation and log file). Yes, my sound card was disabled. I re-enabled and haven't noticed a crash but when disabled I get audio crash. For me after some time attract mode stops doing attract mode until I move the joystick or press a button. I then hear the hard drive spin up and then it starts again soon after Edited December 4, 2019 by wallmachine Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrSco Posted December 6, 2019 Author Share Posted December 6, 2019 On 12/3/2019 at 2:50 PM, MrSco said: well i've been running BigBox now for about 4+ hours and no crashes yet. Usually it would have crashed multiple times (after restarts) by now. The change? I had some autohotkey scripts and xpadder.exe running in the background on boot... i disabled those and just ran BigBox.exe only. one of the autohotkey scripts is used to launch xpadder and bigbox at boot... the other is for some custom controller monitoring to be able to use either the wireless xbox controller or the built-in bartop joystick controls as the first player (toggles the bartop xinmo joysticks enabled/disabled using devcon.exe). i'm not sure which autohotkey script is the issue, or if bigbox doesn't like xpadder running in background? what are you guys using to launch bigbox and other exe's at computer bootup in a silent, clean, hidden manner? Well scratch autohotkey and xpadder off the list of causes... I let BigBox.exe run solo in attract mode for a bit longer than 6 hours and eventually it crashes with the error from my original post. But I’ve tested a couple more times and it’s crashed in 2-4 hours also. So the time it takes seems to be random Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted December 12, 2019 Share Posted December 12, 2019 Wanted to let you guys know that I've been doing some stability testing for the last week or so. Nothing is really new, but a few points: I've been testing on 5 different machines with different hardware and letting them run for extended periods of time (up to 48 hours straight), and haven't experienced any crashes outside of known issues (described below). Unfortunately it is known that there are some themes that do introduce stability issues. For the most part, the themes that are in the themes manager are stable, but there are a couple still that may have minor/rare issues, so it's always best to try a different theme. Unified and Unified Redux are both known to be completely stable themes, as is the Default theme, so those are good themes to test with. In the odd situation where a sound card was disabled, removed, or disconnected, there were crashes happening, but I'm hoping I have those fixed in the latest beta. Microsoft introduced a bug in either Windows or the .NET Framework some time in the past year or so that started causing some unfortunate issues with Windows Media Player. So if you are using WMP as your video playback engine, I strongly suggest switching to VLC if you're concerned with long-term stability. Unfortunately drivers (especially video drivers) can still cause issues with WPF (the theming engine). It is rare but it does happen, so sometimes either upgrading or even downgrading video drivers can be the fix. I still find this ridiculous, but some poorly written software (MSI Afterburner is a common problem, for example) can significantly interfere with WPF .NET apps (it's not just Big Box or LaunchBox), and cause performance or stability issues, or sometimes the apps won't even run. If you're having issues, I strongly suggest trying to kill off any and all background apps via Task Manager to see if it makes any difference. Believe it or not, on very rare occasions we find that unplugging a particular USB device can fix issues as well. The last time this occurred, it was because a particular device on the system was not being powered properly with the hub that it was attached to, for example. So it's also worth trying unplugging all USB devices sans for the keyboard and mouse, to see if that happens to fix whatever issue you're running into. Hopefully that helps folks who are running into stability issues. It pretty much sums up all of the potential issues and solutions that we've found in the past few years. Unfortunately most of the above are not things that we can really tackle or fix, or we would have been on them already. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neil9000 Posted December 12, 2019 Share Posted December 12, 2019 9 minutes ago, Jason Carr said: I still find this ridiculous, but some poorly written software (MSI Afterburner is a common problem, for example) can significantly interfere with WPF .NET apps (it's not just Big Box or LaunchBox), and cause performance or stability issues, or sometimes the apps won't even run. If you're having issues, I strongly suggest trying to kill off any and all background apps via Task Manager to see if it makes any difference. I will also add to this that it can also effect actual PC games. It's due to the way the program hooks into programs in order to monitor them, some just dont like it. I actually re-installed Bioshock Infinite on steam a couple of days ago, and couldnt get that game to launch at all, having previously finished it years ago. Turns out that it doesnt like the current version of MSI Afterburner, as soon as i disabled that the game loaded up just fine. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wallmachine Posted December 13, 2019 Share Posted December 13, 2019 11 hours ago, Jason Carr said: Wanted to let you guys know that I've been doing some stability testing for the last week or so. During your stability testing did this occur for you as well? Attract mode stops doing attract mode after some time and you have to move move the joystick or press a button for it to start again (I then hear the hard drive spin up and then it starts again soon after) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted December 13, 2019 Share Posted December 13, 2019 1 hour ago, wallmachine said: During your stability testing did this occur for you as well? Attract mode stops doing attract mode after some time and you have to move move the joystick or press a button for it to start again (I then hear the hard drive spin up and then it starts again soon after) No, I've never experienced that, but I suspect that it's probably due to your hard drive going to sleep, so maybe you can change that in the Windows Power Options? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wallmachine Posted December 13, 2019 Share Posted December 13, 2019 (edited) 1 hour ago, Jason Carr said: No, I've never experienced that, but I suspect that it's probably due to your hard drive going to sleep, so maybe you can change that in the Windows Power Options? yeah that would most likely work but wanted to avoid doing it. Edited December 13, 2019 by wallmachine Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrSco Posted December 18, 2019 Author Share Posted December 18, 2019 On 12/12/2019 at 12:48 PM, Jason Carr said: Wanted to let you guys know that I've been doing some stability testing for the last week or so. Nothing is really new, but a few points: I've been testing on 5 different machines with different hardware and letting them run for extended periods of time (up to 48 hours straight), and haven't experienced any crashes outside of known issues (described below). Unfortunately it is known that there are some themes that do introduce stability issues. For the most part, the themes that are in the themes manager are stable, but there are a couple still that may have minor/rare issues, so it's always best to try a different theme. Unified and Unified Redux are both known to be completely stable themes, as is the Default theme, so those are good themes to test with. In the odd situation where a sound card was disabled, removed, or disconnected, there were crashes happening, but I'm hoping I have those fixed in the latest beta. Microsoft introduced a bug in either Windows or the .NET Framework some time in the past year or so that started causing some unfortunate issues with Windows Media Player. So if you are using WMP as your video playback engine, I strongly suggest switching to VLC if you're concerned with long-term stability. Unfortunately drivers (especially video drivers) can still cause issues with WPF (the theming engine). It is rare but it does happen, so sometimes either upgrading or even downgrading video drivers can be the fix. I still find this ridiculous, but some poorly written software (MSI Afterburner is a common problem, for example) can significantly interfere with WPF .NET apps (it's not just Big Box or LaunchBox), and cause performance or stability issues, or sometimes the apps won't even run. If you're having issues, I strongly suggest trying to kill off any and all background apps via Task Manager to see if it makes any difference. Believe it or not, on very rare occasions we find that unplugging a particular USB device can fix issues as well. The last time this occurred, it was because a particular device on the system was not being powered properly with the hub that it was attached to, for example. So it's also worth trying unplugging all USB devices sans for the keyboard and mouse, to see if that happens to fix whatever issue you're running into. Hopefully that helps folks who are running into stability issues. It pretty much sums up all of the potential issues and solutions that we've found in the past few years. Unfortunately most of the above are not things that we can really tackle or fix, or we would have been on them already. I tried switching to Unified Redux, but still crashes after some hours of running attract mode. @Jason Carr when you ran your 48 hour tests were your running attract mode with videos for 13000+ games? me thinks there’s a memory leak after it plays so many video files... all my games have video snaps... 13,000+ of em Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted December 18, 2019 Share Posted December 18, 2019 17 hours ago, MrSco said: I tried switching to Unified Redux, but still crashes after some hours of running attract mode. @Jason Carr when you ran your 48 hour tests were your running attract mode with videos for 13000+ games? me thinks there’s a memory leak after it plays so many video files... all my games have video snaps... 13,000+ of em Yes, I have something like 12,500 games and the vast majority of them have videos. There's not a memory leak related to VLC video playback. As I've stated previously though, Windows Media Player has gotten bugged out by Microsoft in the latest Windows or .NET updates (irritatingly) and does sometimes show memory leaks, so make sure you're using VLC. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrSco Posted January 23, 2020 Author Share Posted January 23, 2020 @Jason Carr I think I narrowed down the instability to using autohotkey script to launch bigbox. I use an autohotkey script at Windows logon using task scheduler (regular user non-elevated) to launch bigbox and that seems to be causing the crashes after 2-4 hours... any suggestions? a nice feature suggestion for LaunchBox/bigbox would the ability to set external scripts/exe’s to launch along with and close when LaunchBox/bigbox is closed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted January 24, 2020 Share Posted January 24, 2020 On 1/23/2020 at 11:33 AM, MrSco said: @Jason Carr I think I narrowed down the instability to using autohotkey script to launch bigbox. I use an autohotkey script at Windows logon using task scheduler (regular user non-elevated) to launch bigbox and that seems to be causing the crashes after 2-4 hours... any suggestions? a nice feature suggestion for LaunchBox/bigbox would the ability to set external scripts/exe’s to launch along with and close when LaunchBox/bigbox is closed. Interestingly, there's a similar ticket here that just came to my attention: https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues/5148/bigbox-crashes-when-shortcut-is-added-to I have no idea why scripting would cause crashes for Big Box. Unfortunately I'm inclined to suspect that it might be an MS bug, but we should at least figure out exactly what the error is that is causing the crash. Per the ticket above, it appears to be caused by controller code somehow. What do you have in your Windows application event log when it crashes? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrSco Posted January 25, 2020 Author Share Posted January 25, 2020 5 hours ago, Jason Carr said: Interestingly, there's a similar ticket here that just came to my attention: https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues/5148/bigbox-crashes-when-shortcut-is-added-to I have no idea why scripting would cause crashes for Big Box. Unfortunately I'm inclined to suspect that it might be an MS bug, but we should at least figure out exactly what the error is that is causing the crash. Per the ticket above, it appears to be caused by controller code somehow. What do you have in your Windows application event log when it crashes? that is interesting... I did some more testing and I think it might be related to controllers for me as well... One of the scripts I launch along with bigbox on startup is an autohotkey script that polls for xbox 360 controller connects/disconnects. I use bigbox on my bartop arcade and it has built-in xinmo 2 arcade sticks/buttons. the autohotkey script disables the xinmo usb device via devcon.exe when it detects an xbox 360 controller is connected. this is done so the 360 controller is player 1 instead of player 3, since controllers get assigned priority based on when they are connected/plugged in. since the xinmo is always hardwired into the bartop, the only option is to programmatically disable it so the xbox controller can be player 1 and reenable it when xbox controller disconnects so xinmo is player 1 and 2. my guess is the autohotkey code that loops and polls for 360 controller connects/disconnects is maybe conflicting with bigbox's controller polling? also if someone has a better idea to handle always connected arcade sticks and connecting/disconnecting wireless 360 controllers I'm all ears and would love suggestions. the only other idea i had was to do a physical hardware switch that somehow "unplugs" the xinmo usb wire from the computer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrSco Posted January 25, 2020 Author Share Posted January 25, 2020 On 11/26/2019 at 12:11 PM, MrSco said: I just had BigBox.exe crash on me while it was running for a couple hours just sitting idle going through its random attract mode switching through games and having the videos play. I've had it I've had it do this much longer without issues before. I'm on the latest version of launchbox 10.7... Here is the event log error... Faulting application name: BigBox.exe, version: 10.7.0.0, time stamp: 0x5dd429b2 Faulting module name: ntdll.dll, version: 10.0.18362.418, time stamp: 0x99ca0526 Exception code: 0xc0000374 Fault offset: 0x00000000000f9269 Faulting process id: 0x1c08 Faulting application start time: 0x01d5a46e85993ab6 Faulting application path: H:\Arcade\LaunchBox\BigBox.exe Faulting module path: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll Report Id: a61fdc1c-b95d-4916-bb93-a9f2f74567bf Faulting package full name: Faulting package-relative application ID: any ideas? @Jason Carr this is all thats in the error log when bigbox crashes... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted January 31, 2020 Share Posted January 31, 2020 @MrSco Are you still seeing this issue with 10.11-beta-2? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrSco Posted February 1, 2020 Author Share Posted February 1, 2020 14 hours ago, Jason Carr said: @MrSco Are you still seeing this issue with 10.11-beta-2? I just installed and fired up the 10.11-beta-2 last night and so far about 12 hours and counting and no crashes... looking pretty solid but I don’t wanna jinx it lol. Good work! what did you change?! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted February 1, 2020 Share Posted February 1, 2020 2 hours ago, MrSco said: I just installed and fired up the 10.11-beta-2 last night and so far about 12 hours and counting and no crashes... looking pretty solid but I don’t wanna jinx it lol. Good work! what did you change?! Per that BitBucket thread, all I did was fix a potential null reference issue with controllers. Something where it shouldn't have been issue, but apparently was. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrSco Posted February 2, 2020 Author Share Posted February 2, 2020 @Jason Carr well I think I jinxed it... BigBox finally crashed to the desktop after about 23 hours of running in attract mode. ☹️ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted February 3, 2020 Share Posted February 3, 2020 On 2/1/2020 at 8:48 PM, MrSco said: @Jason Carr well I think I jinxed it... BigBox finally crashed to the desktop after about 23 hours of running in attract mode. ☹️ Well, I am curious to know if it's more stable now than it was before, but Dave in the Bitbucket thread also responded that it did not fix his issue either. I'll take another look to see if there's anything further I can do. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrSco Posted April 23, 2020 Author Share Posted April 23, 2020 @Jason Carr I've done some more testing on the latest version 10.14, on different machines and with the default theme enabled, and BigBox.exe always crashes after a random amount of time (the quickest being around 2 hours and the longest around 23 hours). Here are the errors from the event log... First error Event 1026, .NET Runtime Application: BigBox.exe Framework Version: v4.0.30319 Description: The process was terminated due to an unhandled exception. Exception Info: exception code c0000005, exception address 00007FFA7C4BC474 Stack: Error immediately after: Event 1000, Application Error Faulting application name: BigBox.exe, version: 10.14.0.0, time stamp: 0x5ea063fe Faulting module name: ntdll.dll, version: 10.0.18362.778, time stamp: 0x0c1bb301 Exception code: 0xc0000005 Fault offset: 0x000000000003c474 Faulting process id: 0x48cc Faulting application start time: 0x01d61917464827dc Faulting application path: H:\Arcade\LaunchBox\BigBox.exe Faulting module path: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll Report Id: dbed4157-aaba-414d-95a6-e42f416c6d41 Faulting package full name: Faulting package-relative application ID: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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