Launcbox Initial screen not working

[danxmanly]

When staring launch box, the welcome screen pops up and views fine, but the actual program is frozen on this one screen  for me with nothing really showing.  If I hover the mouse over the far right column and dbl click, the games properties come up.  But that's about all I can do with the exception of hovering the mouse over the right corners for the screen and getting the restore, close options.  

Big box still works fine... all video drivers up to date, W10 up to date, LB 11.8 up to date.,  and have reinstalled LB to see if that clears it up.

Any ideas?  BTW... this used to not be the case as the pinball platform shown was added last month with launchbox working.  Tried going back to LB 11.0 with no difference.

Edited December 24, 2020 by danxmanly

[danxmanly]

As I continue to troubleshoot, I removed the pinball xml in the games folder, and when I launch I get the ALL Games screen, with everything greyed out.   Can't scroll or select games.

Edited December 24, 2020 by danxmanly

[Retro808]

In your \Backups folder open one of the zipped backups and take the Settings.xml and use to replace the one located in your \Data folder.

[danxmanly]

Thanks for the response.  Went to the backup folder and all my  backups have todays date on them... nothing earlier.  I went ahead and did what you recommended with the oldest backup I had and moved the settings.xml from that one, overwriting the one in my data folder.  Relaunched and same thing.  

I don't recall ever deleting any old backups... maybe some default setting is only keeping a certain amount.  I did have 25 of them all with todays date.

[Retro808]

You can also just delete the settings.xml from the \Data folder and on startup of LB a new one will generate. You will have to reset from LB settings, but most of those are just visual items of LB and image priorities. None of the settings in there are for games and emulators.

[danxmanly]

Thanks!   That did it, and I also was able to then find an older system backup from a few months ago that I was able to pull the system.xml from.  Everything seems just like it was.  

Curious as I always try to learn from these things... what could have caused the system.xml to get these settings so messed up?  I never edited it manually.. but being as I did just add visual pinball functionality with a portrait screen for the main playfield, I am going to pay close attention as I move forward bringing in pinball games.

Thanks again!

[Retro808]

Corrupt xml files typically happen from an abrupt LB close which can prevent LB from properly saving data it needs to.