Big Box - Crashing while in attract mode

[MrSco]

1 hour ago, jestermgee said:

I'm using WMP, only default theme and still it will just lock up 100% of the time if I leave it running for an hour or so. Basically I kind of have to now disable this feature if I want any of my family to play it since if you leave it, walk away you can bet next time you switch over it will just be frozen and have to switch it off and on again. 

Doesn't seem to be video related as I have seen it just lock up on a game where there may not even be a video, just switches to the game then it stops on that game. As mentioned, it is still half responsive in the BG, if I press the BACK button then wait maybe 2 minutes it goes back, then the whole system freezes. Will also note it seems to be placing a huge load on the system since the fans in my small mini PC are basically flat out which only occurs when there is a decent load. In typical unattended mode it's using barely any resources but when in this frozen state its consuming something. 

I wish it had have been possible to test bigbox mode in more detail before investing since as nice as it is, it's not useful if it isn't reliable. 

Have you checked that WMP is selected in both launch box and big box settings? There are settings for both. Also, have you checked the video files for corruption? Also, have you tried letting attract mode run with videos disabled? Also, there is a debugging log option in launch box that may shed some light on things too…got a log file to look at?

[C-Beats]

6 hours ago, jestermgee said:

its consuming something

If you haven't already go into Image Cache settings some night before you go to bed and press the "Populate All Images" (or something similar). If those aren't populated during attract mode it tries to build them very quickly and can cause some pretty big performance overhead. Doing it on it's own speeds it up a bit and should eliminate that as a possibility moving forward.

If you haven't already please submit a bug request with information about what version you're on, themes you're using, plugins in play, etc. As stated I don't believe I've heard of anyone else running into stability issues using WMP/Default on the current version so it's something the team would need to delve into. That being said if you have sleep/hibernate set up on your computer while it's running that's a tad different and is known to cause issues.

6 hours ago, jestermgee said:

I wish it had have been possible to test bigbox mode in more detail before investing since as nice as it is, it's not useful if it isn't reliable. 

You can test Big Box for as many 30m intervals as you'd like before purchase. Though it sounds like it's taking a bit longer than that to break for you. You could reach out to support (support@unbrokensoftware.com) and let them know you're unhappy with your purchase and perhaps they can work something out with you.

[jestermgee]

10 hours ago, C-Beats said:

If you haven't already go into Image Cache settings some night before you go to bed and press the "Populate All Images" (or something similar). If those aren't populated during attract mode it tries to build them very quickly and can cause some pretty big performance overhead. Doing it on it's own speeds it up a bit and should eliminate that as a possibility moving forward.

If you haven't already please submit a bug request with information about what version you're on, themes you're using, plugins in play, etc. As stated I don't believe I've heard of anyone else running into stability issues using WMP/Default on the current version so it's something the team would need to delve into. That being said if you have sleep/hibernate set up on your computer while it's running that's a tad different and is known to cause issues.

You can test Big Box for as many 30m intervals as you'd like before purchase. Though it sounds like it's taking a bit longer than that to break for you. You could reach out to support (support@unbrokensoftware.com) and let them know you're unhappy with your purchase and perhaps they can work something out with you.

Thanks. 

Nah all good, it's complex software doing quite a bit and it's running on windows so.... 

There are a few things I still need to check into.  Spent weeks setting up and troubleshooting emulators I kind of didn't think i'd have to also troubleshoot the "screensaver" feature too. I will progress through those steps and do some additional tests. It is sporadic so could be certain files that cause the issue, if it is certain video files that will be hard as this system has 9000 games on it. 

[MrSco]

On 5/27/2025 at 6:42 AM, MrSco said:

crashes have started happening very frequently in attract mode now. even with default theme. within minutes or an hour at most. It used to at least run for some hours before crashing. I can't believe this has been busted like this for so many YEARS!

In an effort to get to the bottom of it, I asked chatgpt for some incite based on the event viewer errors (not very descriptive most of the time). I also wrote a powershell script to test all the video files for corruption... it found two corrupted videos even though the videos played fine... I'll attach the script and the busted videos in hopes it will shed some light...

Application: BigBox.exe CoreCLR Version: 6.0.3624.51421 .NET Version: 6.0.36 Description: The process was terminated due to an unhandled exception. Exception Info: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. at SharpDX.XAudio2.VoiceShadow.VoiceVtbl.OnVoiceProcessingPassStartImpl(IntPtr thisObject, Int32 bytes) Faulting application name: BigBox.exe, version: 13.18.0.0, time stamp: 0x670d0000 Faulting module name: unknown, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x00000000 Exception code: 0xc0000005 Fault offset: 0x00007ffccad25773 Faulting process id: 0x2154 Faulting application start time: 0x1DB5B7A6AF92289 Faulting application path: H:\Arcade\LaunchBox\Core\BigBox.exe Faulting module path: unknown Report Id: 13e25831-29f3-4802-83a5-84da61c57c95 Faulting package full name: Faulting package-relative application ID: The program BigBox.exe version 13.20.0.0 stopped interacting with Windows and was closed. To see if more information about the problem is available, check the problem history in the Security and Maintenance control panel. 

i'm getting these errors randomly while bigbox is running in attract mode idle... just randomly stopping on different games to play their videos and display their artwork


It appears that BigBox is encountering an unhandled exception within its audio processing code—specifically in the SharpDX.XAudio2 layer—while it’s in attract mode. The error message:

> **System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.**  
> **at SharpDX.XAudio2.VoiceShadow.VoiceVtbl.OnVoiceProcessingPassStartImpl(IntPtr thisObject, Int32 bytes)**

suggests that something in the audio “voice” processing for your media playback isn’t being properly initialized or is being prematurely disposed. In practical terms, when BigBox rotates through the various games and their associated videos or artwork, an audio callback (or a resource that the callback expects) is missing, leading to a crash with an access violation (0xc0000005).

I'm gonna run another attract mode test and see if it crashes now. will report back.

Check-VideoCorruption.zip 7.9 kB · 0 downloads corrupted_videos.zip 10.57 MB · 0 downloads corrupted_videos_found.txt 42.82 kB · 0 downloads

 

11 minutes ago, jestermgee said:

Thanks. 

Nah all good, it's complex software doing quite a bit and it's running on windows so.... 

There are a few things I still need to check into.  Spent weeks setting up and troubleshooting emulators I kind of didn't think i'd have to also troubleshoot the "screensaver" feature too. I will progress through those steps and do some additional tests. It is sporadic so could be certain files that cause the issue, if it is certain video files that will be hard as this system has 9000 games on it. 

you can scan your video files with a powershell 7 script like the one I used above.

Another thing of note, over all these years and all the crashes I've had over multiple different systems, windows 10 and windows 11... never did the bigbox attract mode crashing also crash or freeze the computer. I was always able to just alt tab and pull up task manager to kill bigbox.exe or the mere act of alt tabbing would kick in the windows (not responding) alert asking to wait or kill bigbox. After killing the frozen bigbox.exe, I've always been able to just start bigbox again immediately. So that leads me to believe you have some other system stability issues with your system hardware and system os... maybe also run a windows memory diagnostic on your ram...

[jestermgee]

21 hours ago, MrSco said:

 

you can scan your video files with a powershell 7 script like the one I used above.

Another thing of note, over all these years and all the crashes I've had over multiple different systems, windows 10 and windows 11... never did the bigbox attract mode crashing also crash or freeze the computer. I was always able to just alt tab and pull up task manager to kill bigbox.exe or the mere act of alt tabbing would kick in the windows (not responding) alert asking to wait or kill bigbox. After killing the frozen bigbox.exe, I've always been able to just start bigbox again immediately. So that leads me to believe you have some other system stability issues with your system hardware and system os... maybe also run a windows memory diagnostic on your ram...

Nah there is no stability issue, i've tested this system extensively and nothing at all causes any issues of any kind until attract mode runs. 

As a test yesterday I disabled Attract mode to switch platforms so it would only stay in a single selected platform / playlist and it ran all day yesterday, in multiple lists I tested without a single issue. This was after I did a force image rebuild tho. I will continue to test. 

The issue is rather strange from my experience. I have actually watched it "lock up" and when it does the attract scrolling happens, it lands on a game displaying just the image thumb then just seems to freeze as if the video preview is trying to load but cannot. The system fans will kick up and while I can press numlock for instance and it responds, nothing else does such as CTRL+ALT+DEL or ALT+TAB. If I press ESC and wait maybe 2 minutes it will back out but then after about 20 seconds, computer is frozen. This only occurs in Attract mode. I have left the system on for a day without attract running, both in a game just idle and in big box just idle and neither time it causes an issue. 

So from my tests the issue is 100% related to the attract mode and not something to do with my system. I will state tho this is a mini PC running an i5 12th gen CPU with integrated GPU so no dedicated GPU in this system which is not an issue for the task, it runs up to PS3 games without issue (PS3 is where it tops out). The issue appears to be video file related or some kind of timing issue at some stages when loading a video. I have 9k games so there would be a lot of videos. 

I do have another issue that is somewhat related. Occasionally when I exit a game or after I press back from Attract, the system appears frozen and unresponsive but after about 30 seconds comes good and starts to work so it does seem to me like a thread of something is getting stuck and not releasing. I also have constant issues when I exit either LB or BB where it never actually quits and just hangs in memory and I have disabled the auto backup feature, does not happen every time but on quite a few occasions so not sure what is up with that either. Once I finish some rounds of ruling out what isn't the issue I will look more into what could be the issue and get some clean logs to check through.