BigBox City Hunter 2 Theme Exception

[kal9000]

I just tried downloading the cityhunter 2 theme from within bigbox. While navigating through I frequently see the attached exception. If looked for the file and it does exist (also attached). I'm on the latest launchbox as of the time of this posting (11.4).

 

ListBoxItemStyle.xaml

[C-Beats]

This usually happens because we fail to be able to create the symlinks we use in the core folder on start up. The most common reason for this is the drive is formatted exFat instead of NFTS. Could you confirm how your drive is formatted? We can go from there.

[kal9000]

It's NTFS, thanks for the quick reply!

[kal9000]

Any further suggestions? Just downloaded unified theme from within bigbox on 11.15 and getting all sorts of those errors.

[Jason Carr]

First off, please try shutting Big Box down and rebooting. Most of the time a restart/reboot fixes this particular issue.

[Jason Carr]

On 7/29/2021 at 1:20 PM, kal9000 said:

It's NTFS, thanks for the quick reply!

Can you take a screenshot of your LaunchBox\Core folder while Big Box is running?

[kal9000]

So, looks like shutting it down and restarting a couple times did the trick! I will take a screenshot of that folder and share next time the issue happens. I do notice it changes a lot at run-time with short-cuts being created and deleted afterwards.

[kal9000]

So, it's still happening here w/ Unified theme (have seen it with most others too). 

Attached screenshots of core folder before (when error occurred), and after (after launchbox shutdown) and a screen showing the error within launchbox. Please let me know if I can supply any other details.

 

[C-Beats]

If you don't already can you turn on debug logs via the LaunchBox options menu. Your screenshots indicate that LaunchBox is failing to create the symlinks we normally create on startup which is causing the error you are seeing. The debug log would help us see any errors related to creating the symlinks and would help us resolve the issue.

[kal9000]

enabling debug logs.. more details to follow!

[kal9000]

Here are some concise debug logs from a session with the error. Looks like there's an error, 

Could not find file 'C:\emulation\LaunchBox\Themes\Unified\Images\Theme\Background\_Default.png'.

Debug 2021-08-04 04-09-35 PM.log

[kal9000]

Here are some concise debug logs from a session with the error. Looks like there's an error, 

Could not find file 'C:\emulation\LaunchBox\Themes\Unified\Images\Theme\Background\_Default.png'.

 

Debug 2021-08-04 04-09-35 PM.log

Edited August 4, 2021 by kal9000

[kal9000]

Any ideas? Should I just delete the theme and re-install? I installed this theme from the in-app theme browser, so I'd assume those should be stable..

[faeran]

Hi @kal9000. The error message does seem to indicate that the symlinks are failing to connect.

A few thoughts:

• Make sure you aren't running LaunchBox or Big Box as an admin.
• Make sure you don't have any kind of permission issue that could cause LaunchBox to not be able to load those files (like having a syncing program like DropBox locking the files down while Big Box is trying to use them).

A potential workaround could be for you to make a copy of the city hunter and place it into your LaunchBox\Core\Themes folder. Then right click the folder, go into properties and make it read-only.

 

 

[kal9000]

Thanks,

So I do use a program to sync files, it's called 'goodsync'. I don't want to give that up as I rely on it to keep my launchbox installs in sync across machines. 

 

[faeran]

Sounds like you may have figured out your issue. To confirm, turn off Goodsync and see if you are getting the same errors as before.

If it is goodsync causing your issues, you could try and optimize your process. Some ideas could be to make Goodsync stop syncing certain folders, or making it only sync at certain times. You'll have to figure out how flexible goodsync is.

You definitely don't want to have 2 different programs trying to access the same files at the same time. This could potentially lead to more than just theme loading errors, but missing or corrupt LaunchBox data.