BigBox crash while sitting idle doing attract mode

[MrSco]

6 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

@MrSco It would still really help to know if deleting your Settings.xml and BigBoxSettings.xml files makes any difference for you.

Still crashes the same way after deleting the settings xml files 

[Jason Carr]

17 hours ago, MrSco said:

Still crashes the same way after deleting the settings xml files 

Okay, well that rules that out. Still puzzled, and still haven't seen a legitimate crash. I did some testing recently to see if a corrupted video file would crash Big Box, and I could not get it to crash (but who knows, maybe a video file has to be corrupted in a certain way for it to crash). We have had a couple reports recently that corrupted video files can crash Big Box, so I wanted to do some testing there.

Media is really the only thing we have left here though as a possibility, considering that it's happening on multiple machines, either that or we're missing something. It's a pain, but the only thing I can recommend at this point would be to try and temporarily remove media folders to see what folder might be causing the issue.

[Danabis]

Just a suggestion. I will leave it up to you guys to determine if this is a viable solution. It seems there could be many factors to chase here. It would seem there is a workaround for some.  I see mention of using AHK scripts or scheduled tasks. Maybe consider utilizing one of the workarounds as a optional feature in later releases? You could still chase this trouble but for those who are less technically inclined that may provide a more attractive choice.

For example I have chased this one for a while. I get a crash usually around 48 hrs in attract mode and I have ever since it was introduced. I am not suggesting my solution is a good one as it has some security concerns but my setup is a dedicated arcade machine that I could remove from my network if I had any security concerns.  I currently have my machine setup to boot directly into windows  and skip any login. It will then launch bigbox at startup. I created a batch file with the windows restart command and used the task scheduler to scheduled it at 5am every morning when I am sure nobody will be on the machine. It works like a charm and helps clean up any other potentially problematic software that you sometimes run into with a machine running for long periods like steam for example.

I see other mentions that may be easier to utilize as an option. Perhaps allowing the scheduling of bigbox to shut down and start up at different periods. Obviously this may not provide a good solution for those who crash less than 24hrs but perhaps a suggestion to consider including a work around in a future release for those who don't want to chase software issues. I feel like most of those who have this issue are of the post 24hr variety but obviously not all are. I am sure there are those way smarter than me who are using different work arounds that could be viable options that bigbox could control.

Just a suggestion from a fellow nerd.

[MrSco]

16 minutes ago, Danabis said:

Just a suggestion. I will leave it up to you guys to determine if this is a viable solution. It seems there could be many factors to chase here. It would seem there is a workaround for some.  I see mention of using AHK scripts or scheduled tasks. Maybe consider utilizing one of the workarounds as a optional feature in later releases? You could still chase this trouble but for those who are less technically inclined that may provide a more attractive choice.

For example I have chased this one for a while. I get a crash usually around 48 hrs in attract mode and I have ever since it was introduced. I am not suggesting my solution is a good one as it has some security concerns but my setup is a dedicated arcade machine that I could remove from my network if I had any security concerns.  I currently have my machine setup to boot directly into windows  and skip any login. It will then launch bigbox at startup. I created a batch file with the windows restart command and used the task scheduler to scheduled it at 5am every morning when I am sure nobody will be on the machine. It works like a charm and helps clean up any other potentially problematic software that you sometimes run into with a machine running for long periods like steam for example.

I see other mentions that may be easier to utilize as an option. Perhaps allowing the scheduling of bigbox to shut down and start up at different periods. Obviously this may not provide a good solution for those who crash less than 24hrs but perhaps a suggestion to consider including a work around in a future release for those who don't want to chase software issues. I feel like most of those who have this issue are of the post 24hr variety but obviously not all are. I am sure there are those way smarter than me who are using different work arounds that could be viable options that bigbox could control.

Just a suggestion from a fellow nerd.

nice, thats not a bad idea. I did another workaround a while back (these crashes have been happening since v10 for about a year or more now)...

https://forums.launchbox-app.com/topic/52601-bigbox-crash-while-sitting-idle-doing-attract-mode/?do=findComment&comment=357277

attached to this post is a more recent version of the startup script I use that has an automatic relaunch of bigbox with a countdown to cancel when bigbox is closed/crashes.

 

Also, In case any one is wondering, yes, i tested bigbox.exe running directly and not through autohotkey startup scripts and it still crashes the same way.

launchbox_scripts.zip

[MrSco]

1 hour ago, Jason Carr said:

Okay, well that rules that out. Still puzzled, and still haven't seen a legitimate crash. I did some testing recently to see if a corrupted video file would crash Big Box, and I could not get it to crash (but who knows, maybe a video file has to be corrupted in a certain way for it to crash). We have had a couple reports recently that corrupted video files can crash Big Box, so I wanted to do some testing there.

Media is really the only thing we have left here though as a possibility, considering that it's happening on multiple machines, either that or we're missing something. It's a pain, but the only thing I can recommend at this point would be to try and temporarily remove media folders to see what folder might be causing the issue.

I'm running a script against all my video files with ffmpeg to see if it finds any corrupted videos. that should help rule out the media...

https://superuser.com/a/1241089

[Danabis]

20 minutes ago, MrSco said:

nice, thats not a bad idea. I did another workaround a while back (these crashes have been happening since v10 for about a year or more now)...

https://forums.launchbox-app.com/topic/52601-bigbox-crash-while-sitting-idle-doing-attract-mode/?do=findComment&comment=357277

attached to this post is a more recent version of the startup script I use that has an automatic relaunch of bigbox with a countdown to cancel when bigbox is closed/crashes.

 

Also, In case any one is wondering, yes, i tested bigbox.exe running directly and not through autohotkey startup scripts and it still crashes the same way.

launchbox_scripts.zip 1.01 MB · 0 downloads

Ya I saw this and thought it was a interesting solution. On FB I saw mention of scheduling a task to essentially restart bigbox at pre defined intervals but I was not entirely sure how that one goes. I am sure it is not too difficult and that user claims it solves their issues. I like the restart option better since I have the supporting settings to allow the machine to boot up into bigbox without intervention. I use Moonlight to stream the machine in other areas of the house and I also occasionally use another restart option if I happen to land on a game that is having issues.

It seems like there could be a few work arounds. I know it would be nice to fix but that is a long road to get there.

[MrSco]

8 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

Okay, well that rules that out. Still puzzled, and still haven't seen a legitimate crash. I did some testing recently to see if a corrupted video file would crash Big Box, and I could not get it to crash (but who knows, maybe a video file has to be corrupted in a certain way for it to crash). We have had a couple reports recently that corrupted video files can crash Big Box, so I wanted to do some testing there.

Media is really the only thing we have left here though as a possibility, considering that it's happening on multiple machines, either that or we're missing something. It's a pain, but the only thing I can recommend at this point would be to try and temporarily remove media folders to see what folder might be causing the issue.

welp, i ran the ffmpeg script to test all the .mp4 files for corruption and they all checked out... no errors found. I did notice that some of the 30 video files are like 30MB... could bigbox be choking on too many videos at a larger size?  i may have asked this before but, When you run your tests are you running attract mode with videos for each game that the video plays fullscreen as the entire background? 

i guess i can check the image files next to rule them out... anyone know a test for image corruption?

[MrSco]

1 hour ago, MrSco said:

welp, i ran the ffmpeg script to test all the .mp4 files for corruption and they all checked out... no errors found. I did notice that some of the 30 video files are like 30MB... could bigbox be choking on too many videos at a larger size?  i may have asked this before but, When you run your tests are you running attract mode with videos for each game that the video plays fullscreen as the entire background? 

i guess i can check the image files next to rule them out... anyone know a test for image corruption?

@Jason Carr  could it be corrupt images causing the crashes? i found this Bad Peggy (https://superuser.com/a/1083216) program to scan all the image files and its only about halfway done but already found lots of errors ... the clear logo one in particular peaked my interest...

[Jason Carr]

9 hours ago, MrSco said:

@Jason Carr  could it be corrupt images causing the crashes? i found this Bad Peggy (https://superuser.com/a/1083216) program to scan all the image files and its only about halfway done but already found lots of errors ... the clear logo one in particular peaked my interest...

Wow. That is certainly possible. Might be worth at least temporarily removing those images to see if it makes any difference.

[MrSco]

28 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

Wow. That is certainly possible. Might be worth at least temporarily removing those images to see if it makes any difference.

Yea I’ve already deleted the bogus images and have been running attract mode for about 12 hours without a crash yet. We shall see...

 

the scary thing is, all these images were downloaded using launchbox’s database search either from wiki or emumovies. So doing another missing media search would potentially bring all the bogus images right back.  

[capiqua]

In the case of Guardians: Denjin Makai II CLEAR Logo, how will it work?,  if it weighs 6.75Mb 3592x1648 and is and another 2.97Mb 2536 x 1200 ?. With that weight and resolution it is normal that the pc can saturate.  https://gamesdb.launchbox-app.com/games/images/26328

[MrSco]

1 hour ago, Jason Carr said:

Wow. That is certainly possible. Might be worth at least temporarily removing those images to see if it makes any difference.

spoke too soon... just had a crash even with all those (attached list of 300 or so out of 14000+ good images) bogus images removed...

Faulting application name: BigBox.exe, version: 11.4.0.0, time stamp: 0x5ee99cfc
Faulting module name: ntdll.dll, version: 10.0.19041.488, time stamp: 0x70e69bad
Exception code: 0xc0000374
Fault offset: 0x00000000000fed79
Faulting process id: 0x5998
Faulting application start time: 0x01d68e44f565ae94
Faulting application path: H:\Arcade\LaunchBox\Core\BigBox.exe
Faulting module path: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll
Report Id: 9307b472-7433-4e33-b94d-9d215103f00a
Faulting package full name: 
Faulting package-relative application ID: 

 

badpeggy_list.txt

[ItchyRobot]

I have noticed that since the last Windows update or two, clear png's hang when opening with Windows Paint 3D. It will eventually open if tried multiple times. It is almost as if Windows changed the way it handles these clear PNG's or something... just pure speculation on my part. I wonder if this has anything to with all of this.

Has anyone else seen this buggy issue with Windows and clear PNG's lately?

Edited September 19, 2020 by ItchyRobot

[MrSco]

4 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

Wow. That is certainly possible. Might be worth at least temporarily removing those images to see if it makes any difference.

another crash this time on 11.6 on the NUC (last crash after removing 'bogus' images was on my 8700 i7/1080ti rig)...

Faulting application name: BigBox.exe, version: 11.6.0.0, time stamp: 0x5ee99cfc
Faulting module name: ntdll.dll, version: 10.0.18362.1049, time stamp: 0xb5beef21
Exception code: 0xc0000374
Fault offset: 0x00000000000f9229
Faulting process id: 0x2ac0
Faulting application start time: 0x01d68e967776e434
Faulting application path: H:\Arcade\LaunchBox\Core\BigBox.exe
Faulting module path: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll
Report Id: 2d7a28a5-9bc9-4653-bfa9-97617a9974dc
Faulting package full name: 
Faulting package-relative application ID: 

there was a fault bucket error in the log just after. i attached it as well

Report.wer

[ItchyRobot]

I ran attract mode last night to get you another error/crash log. See attached two files. The first log (Bigbox-libavcodec_plugin.dll) seems to show the crash happening after about 5 hours of running (I started it around midnight), and the second log (Bigbox-.NET Runtime) is from 1-second after the first log.

 

new1-a.txt new1-b.txt

[Jason Carr]

Thank you guys. I still haven't been able to reproduce either error, unfortunately. I'm still running my testing.

@MrSco I'm thinking I have to be missing something somehow. I'm sorry that it's been so long and that we haven't been able to get it figured out. I'm wondering if you'd be willing to do (yet another) test for me. From what I can tell, it has to somehow be related to the collection (because you're testing on multiple machines and such), but as I've been testing with your data it doesn't seem to be data-related, and now we know that it doesn't seem to be media-related. Would you be willing to make a brand new instance of LaunchBox/Big Box on one of your machines and import just a few platforms? That way we can confirm whether it's actually collection-related or not.

@ItchyRobot Can you try updating to the latest version of .NET Core? There's actually a later version out than the one that comes with the setup. Here's a direct link:

https://download.visualstudio.microsoft.com/download/pr/add2ffbe-a288-4d47-8b09-a39c8645f505/8516700dd5bd85fe07e8010e55d8f653/windowsdesktop-runtime-3.1.8-win-x64.exe

 

[ItchyRobot]

14 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

Thank you guys. I still haven't been able to reproduce either error, unfortunately. I'm still running my testing.

@ItchyRobot Can you try updating to the latest version of .NET Core? There's actually a later version out than the one that comes with the setup. Here's a direct link:

https://download.visualstudio.microsoft.com/download/pr/add2ffbe-a288-4d47-8b09-a39c8645f505/8516700dd5bd85fe07e8010e55d8f653/windowsdesktop-runtime-3.1.8-win-x64.exe

 

Maybe a success! I ran it all last night and I woke up with it still running.

Though I am not exactly sure that the .NET update you listed is the cure. A day ago I also updated my Nvidia 1660 drivers to the latest game ready drivers - they were a little behind.

What made me want to update the Nvidia drivers was because I was having issue with Microsoft's Paint 3D app. After a Windows 10 update (a few updates back), I started having issues with images not opening. I would double click the image, and it would hang when trying to open. It was hit an miss if it would open or not. Seemingly random. After doing some research online I saw that others were also having the issue, with one link took me to an Nvidia link showing Paint 3D bug as one of the fixes. After updating my Nvidia driver the Paint 3D bug disappeared. Bu t I didn not test Bigbox attract mode until after updating .NET... so its hard to say which was the fix.

So, this is either fixed by the Nvidia driver update, or by your .NET link update. I will continue to test and let you know. But this seems to have worked ?

Edited September 24, 2020 by ItchyRobot

[Jason Carr]

12 hours ago, ItchyRobot said:

Maybe a success! I ran it all last night and I woke up with it still running.

Though I am not exactly sure that the .NET update you listed is the cure. A day ago I also updated my Nvidia 1660 drivers to the latest game ready drivers - they were a little behind.

What made me want to update the Nvidia drivers was because I was having issue with Microsoft's Paint 3D app. After a Windows 10 update (a few updates back), I started having issues with images not opening. I would double click the image, and it would hang when trying to open. It was hit an miss if it would open or not. Seemingly random. After doing some research online I saw that others were also having the issue, with one link took me to an Nvidia link showing Paint 3D bug as one of the fixes. After updating my Nvidia driver the Paint 3D bug disappeared. Bu t I didn not test Bigbox attract mode until after updating .NET... so its hard to say which was the fix.

So, this is either fixed by the Nvidia driver update, or by your .NET link update. I will continue to test and let you know. But this seems to have worked ?

Still running strong? Very good to hear.

[ItchyRobot]

13 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

Still running strong? Very good to hear.

I stopped it yesterday to play some pinball, but let it run all night again and its still running, no issues. So this seems to be a real fix, not a fluke

[Jason Carr]

@MrSco I still never was able to replicate your issue, but I did put some significant fixes into 11.7-beta-3 that could possibly fix it.