11.3-beta-1 Released

[Jason Carr]

1 minute ago, wallmachine said:

I have UAC off so wonder if thats why it works for me?

Not sure, but I am able to replicate it, so I'll get it fixed.

[The Papaw]

9 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

By "crashes", do you mean legitimate crashes, or just delays within the app? It's best to clarify that "crashes" are when the EXE stops running completely. Error screens or delays in the app are a separate thing.

Hey Jason, I mean legitimate crashes, click the OKAY button when adding or editing a game and "POOF" when pre-existing videos are already in place, LB closes and the process is no longer running period. Like a kill switch on the EXE lol. 

Beta 9 is out, so let me see how things go with it, as I said in the last post, Beta 8 made much improvement for me, I wasn't being sarcastic or anything, it really got better for me with Beta 8, hoping even better with Beta 9. 

Just so ya know, I have tried  a few different things that may be unique to my system, like disabling the Optane memory (since it is like a ram/cache drive), done full update of windows, including updating from windows v1909 to v2004. Disabled all over-clocking, etc. None of them helped.

I am wondering if most of my crashing issues are related more on the locations I am using for my media and rom storage. Being on 2 different NAS drives. I use one drive mapped as "Y" for my roms and a different drive mapped as "Z" for game media (images, videos, manuals, music, etc.). Not sure if that's the problem, but a possibility. So it may be something I will have to deal with like getting a 14TB or 16TB HDD to get the roms and media back on a single drive. I have 3 PC's and 3 Nvidea Shields in my network, all using the same set of roms and media, to keep from having multiple copies of it all.

Hang in there buddy, like I said, it is getting better and better. It'll get there. Will report good or bad with 11.3.9, hopefully it' working even better than 8

 

[wallmachine]

14 minutes ago, Wanderer189 said:

getting a 14TB or 16TB HDD to get the roms and media back on a single drive

Let me know how this goes for you as I use two 10TB drives for the roms (extracted), and media now. Wonder how the 16TB would be, even 20TB

Edited August 6, 2020 by wallmachine

[Wally]

The NetCore thing broke the portability.

I keep another HDD where I regularly do copy from my master Launchbox HDD for safety reasons.

Today I used the copy HDD and it was a bloody mess.

Inside the Core folder, instead of the Launchbox folder shortcuts, it has copied the actual folders! 

Of course Launchbox and BigBox do not start.

In the best of cases, it asks for NetCore. I ahve installed it 5 times and still asks for it.

One of the main things I liked about BigBox was the portability.

Pitty. I hope it gets fixed.

Meanwhile, how can I have my safety HDD running BigBox again?

 

Thank you

 

EDIT: Removing all the Launchbox folders from Core directory, allowed me to boot Launchbox and BigBox.

 

Edited August 6, 2020 by Wally

[Jason Carr]

14 minutes ago, Wally said:

The NetCore thing broke the portability.

I keep another HDD where I regularly do copy from my master Launchbox HDD for safety reasons.

Today I used the copy HDD and it was a bloody mess.

Inside the Core folder, instead of the Launchbox folder shortcuts, it has copied the actual folders! 

Of course Launchbox and BigBox do not start.

In the best of cases, it asks for NetCore. I ahve installed it 5 times and still asks for it.

One of the main things I liked about BigBox was the portability.

Pitty. I hope it gets fixed.

Meanwhile, how can I have my safety HDD running BigBox again?

 

Thank you

 

Hi Wally, keep in mind that a lot of what you're referring to comes down to the syncing tool. What file syncing tool are you using? Any good syncing tool will provide the option to follow symbolic links or not. For example, I use FreeFileSync (which I highly recommend), and by default, it does not follow symbolic links (but it does have the option to turn it on).

Regardless, the decision to use folder symbolic links was not made lightly. In fact, I worked for 2 days to try and make it so that they were not required, but unfortunately, in order to maintain backwards compatibility with existing themes and plugins, we don't have much of a choice. The only other option that we have in that regard is to throw the entire Core folder into the root LaunchBox folder, which would clutter up the root LaunchBox directory something awful, and cause lots of other confusion.

I do not agree that the .NET Core thing "broke portability", but I understand where you're coming from, and I can see how it was annoying in your case. It would be good to know what file syncing tool you are using.

8 hours ago, Wanderer189 said:

Hey Jason, I mean legitimate crashes, click the OKAY button when adding or editing a game and "POOF" when pre-existing videos are already in place, LB closes and the process is no longer running period. Like a kill switch on the EXE lol. 

Beta 9 is out, so let me see how things go with it, as I said in the last post, Beta 8 made much improvement for me, I wasn't being sarcastic or anything, it really got better for me with Beta 8, hoping even better with Beta 9. 

Just so ya know, I have tried  a few different things that may be unique to my system, like disabling the Optane memory (since it is like a ram/cache drive), done full update of windows, including updating from windows v1909 to v2004. Disabled all over-clocking, etc. None of them helped.

I am wondering if most of my crashing issues are related more on the locations I am using for my media and rom storage. Being on 2 different NAS drives. I use one drive mapped as "Y" for my roms and a different drive mapped as "Z" for game media (images, videos, manuals, music, etc.). Not sure if that's the problem, but a possibility. So it may be something I will have to deal with like getting a 14TB or 16TB HDD to get the roms and media back on a single drive. I have 3 PC's and 3 Nvidea Shields in my network, all using the same set of roms and media, to keep from having multiple copies of it all.

Hang in there buddy, like I said, it is getting better and better. It'll get there. Will report good or bad with 11.3.9, hopefully it' working even better than 8

Hi Wanderer, that is a possibility. We've worked hard to reproduce those crashes, and unfortunately haven't been able to, so most likely it does come down to something unique on your system. Generally, we do not recommend putting media specifically over the network, because it's pretty much guaranteed to cause performance issues at least. Games themselves can be huge, and I often do put those over the network without any real issues, but for media, it's definitely not recommended. For my relatively large collection, the media is still less than 200 gigs, so keeping the media local isn't too much of an issue. The games themselves (which end up being multiple terabytes) I do keep over the network without issues, so I wouldn't bother moving the games (only the media).

[zetec-s-joe]

Once the Stable release comes we will have lost portability??

[Jason Carr]

Just now, zetec-s-joe said:

Once the Stable release comes we will have lost portability??

What are you referring to? No, we are not losing portability.

[Wally]

Plain file copy using Total Commander

Jason you are doing an excellent job.

[neil9000]

i would assume it would work like it already does, if you are moving to another PC that PC needed to have .NET installed, now it needs .net core installed instead. Unless im missing something here?

[Jason Carr]

2 minutes ago, Wally said:

Plain file copy using Total Commander

Jason you are doing an excellent job.

Okay, I have added some code for the next beta that will remove those folder symbolic links on exit, which should solve the file syncing problem, as of course you shouldn't be syncing while LaunchBox or Big Box is running anyways. The only issue then would come up if you forcefully kill all the LaunchBox and Big Box processes with Task Manager. Even if LaunchBox or Big Box crashes, it should recover properly and delete those links. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

3 minutes ago, neil9000 said:

i would assume it would work like it already does, if you are moving to another PC that PC needed to have .NET installed, now it needs .net core installed instead. Unless im missing something here?

Yes, it will work exactly like it does currently.

[zetec-s-joe]

Ok, thanks for clarifying. Might of misread a post in this topic saying portabiity was broken. my mistake. Keep up the awesome work Jason!

[Spiro9210]

Emumovies tab not populating with 11.3-Beta-9. Any solutions?

[sundogak]

3 hours ago, Spiro9210 said:

Emumovies tab not populating with 11.3-Beta-9. Any solutions?

Emumovies is working on my end (Beta 9).  You might check your antivirus didn't block something and do a reinstall. At least on my setup, Norton was being more difficult then usual blocking LB/BB initially on internet access and/or removing DLLs, until I excluded the processes.  

Edited August 7, 2020 by sundogak

[sagaopc]

Beta 9 have this error and couldn't open launchbox:

Unable to load one or more of the requested types.
Could not load type 'System.Runtime.Remoting.Proxies.RealProxy' from assembly 'mscorlib, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089'.
Could not load type 'System.Runtime.Remoting.Proxies.RealProxy' from assembly 'mscorlib, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089'.
Could not load type 'System.Runtime.Remoting.Proxies.RealProxy' from assembly 'mscorlib, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089'.

App:     LaunchBox
Version: 11.3-beta-9
Type:    System.Reflection.ReflectionTypeLoadException
Site:    System.RuntimeType[] GetTypes(System.Reflection.RuntimeModule)
Source:  System.Private.CoreLib

   at System.Reflection.RuntimeModule.GetTypes(RuntimeModule module)
   at System.Reflection.RuntimeModule.GetTypes()
   at System.Reflection.Assembly.GetTypes()
   at Unbroken.LaunchBox.Windows.Root.jRToVwdy1m[hIdRpFFvpn1CAPPqHj](IEnumerable`1  , ConcurrentDictionary`2&  )
   at Unbroken.LaunchBox.Windows.Root.LoadPlugins(String folderPath)
   at Unbroken.LaunchBox.Windows.Desktop.App..ctor()
   at Unbroken.LaunchBox.Windows.Desktop.Program.Main(String[] args)

Recent Log:

   07:27:27 Exception

[EgoBizarro]

Throughout all the 11.3 betas I'm having a stability issue... when clicking on a few games (like 10 in a row), the images kinda freeze and/or I get the following error after which LB closes:

[neil9000]

3 hours ago, EgoBizarro said:

Throughout all the 11.3 betas I'm having a stability issue... when clicking on a few games (like 10 in a row), the images kinda freeze and/or I get the following error after which LB closes:

Im also still having similar issues, although im not getting any error, Launchbox just closes. I can reproduce it every time by simply holding CTRL and clicking a few games, like you would, and i personally was in order to update metadata/images for the selected games.

Here is the log.

Debug 2020-08-07 04-05-49 PM.log

And here is a video of it as im able to reproduce 100% of the time.

[GreenGriffon]

Same here, unfortunately. I can't click more than 6 or 7 games before LB crashes.

 

[Jason Carr]

Hey all, I finally figured out the issue with the crashes. Should have a new beta out with a fix here soon.

[neil9000]

2 hours ago, Pixel said:

I get sudden quick crashes to desktop on the latest beta with no errors.

Also, boxes started to load very slowly. Long wait.

I had that in a previous beta, but not in the current. I believe it was a threading issue that was fixed?

[h4mm3r]

I am having very similar issues as others here with the 11.3 betas.  However I have had these issues since 11.2 stable.  LB freezes and crashes on me consistently while moving around and selecting game(s) or while opening the edit game option.   Would these issues also affect my ability to start BigBox?  For a couple of weeks now I have been unable to launch BigBox from the dedicated .exe or via LB menu.  It just hangs and eventually I have to force close.  Neither the 11.3 betas or going back and reinstalling 11.2 solves my BigBox problem.

I have attached two log files.  The first being LB crash and the second is me trying to start BB from the exe when it just hangs.

This is the first issue I have had in over 2 years that I could not solve myself!  So keep up the great work!

 

 

Debug 2020-08-07 02-38-01 PM.log Debug 2020-08-07 02-43-40 PM.log