2 PCs, 1 Drive

[DanCue]

I have two PCs on my local network. I plan to install Launchbox on each but I don't want to have to save all of the files from each LB instance. I already have LB set up with all of the games on one PC and want to add the other and don't want to go through the whole setup/cleanup phase I had to go through. Is there anyway to have the LB from the second PC point to the network-mapped drive of my other PC and load all of the games/images/videos etc?

[Jason Carr]

On 9/28/2022 at 4:20 PM, DanCue said:

I have two PCs on my local network. I plan to install Launchbox on each but I don't want to have to save all of the files from each LB instance. I already have LB set up with all of the games on one PC and want to add the other and don't want to go through the whole setup/cleanup phase I had to go through. Is there anyway to have the LB from the second PC point to the network-mapped drive of my other PC and load all of the games/images/videos etc?

@DanCue You can do that, but it's not recommended for performance reasons. Generally, you can keep your game files (ROMs) on the network and that should work fine. However, it's a bad idea for performance to keep your media files over the network.

A better idea is to use FreeFileSync to simply sync/copy the files between machines while LaunchBox is closed.

[DanCue]

I ended up using a sync program but I currently have over 300GB of these media files. I'd rather only have one set. I don't think there will be much of a performance hit because the second PC is actually a virtualization in PC 1. For the sake of clarity I said it was 2 PCs originally, but it's really one PC and a virtualization in that PC.

Would you be able to share how I can get launchbox on each sharing these media files?

1 hour ago, Jason Carr said:

@DanCue You can do that, but it's not recommended for performance reasons. Generally, you can keep your game files (ROMs) on the network and that should work fine. However, it's a bad idea for performance to keep your media files over the network.

A better idea is to use FreeFileSync to simply sync/copy the files between machines while LaunchBox is closed.

 

[Jason Carr]

7 minutes ago, DanCue said:

I ended up using a sync program but I currently have over 300GB of these media files. I'd rather only have one set. I don't think there will be much of a performance hit because the second PC is actually a virtualization in PC 1. For the sake of clarity I said it was 2 PCs originally, but it's really one PC and a virtualization in that PC.

Would you be able to share how I can get launchbox on each sharing these media files?

 

For what it's worth, did you know you can you have two different LaunchBox installations on the same machine without virtualization? I'm just not sure why you would want to do that in the first place.

But you would set it up the same way you would set up any network share (but explaining how to do that is probably outside the scope of these forums and I'm sure there's a million walkthroughs for that online). The only custom step would be just changing the paths for your media files, which is done under Tools > Manage Platforms. Alternatively, you could keep the entire LaunchBox folder, including the app, on the network share.

[DanCue]

8 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

For what it's worth, did you know you can you have two different LaunchBox installations on the same machine without virtualization? I'm just not sure why you would want to do that in the first place.

But you would set it up the same way you would set up any network share (but explaining how to do that is probably outside the scope of these forums and I'm sure there's a million walkthroughs for that online). The only custom step would be just changing the paths for your media files, which is done under Tools > Manage Platforms. Alternatively, you could keep the entire LaunchBox folder, including the app, on the network share.

There is a new App (Castor) that will allow me to create a virtualization that we can access remotely with Android. In my case I will be using an Odin. This will allow me to play games on this virtualization and keep my PC available for use by someone else. It uses a patched Moonlight. Traditionally, using moonlight will occupy the entire PC while you are using it remotely. With Castor that is not the case because the one being utilized is the virtualization. 

Edit for clarity: The end goal would be to access my entire library of games without the limit of 1TB on a microSD card. It would also allow me to use the theme I currently have on my desktop which I love... instead of being limited by what Android LB offers.

Hope that makes sense. I imagine this will come up more often as Castor is relatively new and it solves a big problem people have been complaining about moonlight.

Thanks for your help. I tried the entire Launchbox folder on the network share but loading the LB app from there did not work. I'll try going to Tools > Manage Platforms.

Edited September 30, 2022 by DanCue

[Jason Carr]

1 minute ago, DanCue said:

There is a new App (Castor) that will allow me to create a virtualization that we can access remotely with Android. In my case I will be using an Odin. This will allow me to play games on this virtualization and keep my PC available for use by someone else. It uses a patched Moonlight. Traditionally, using moonlight will occupy the entire PC while you are using it remotely. With Castor that is not the case because the one being utilized is the virtualization. 

Hope that makes sense. I imagine this will come up more often as Castor is relatively new and it solves a big problem people have been complaining about moonlight.

Thanks for your help. I tried the entire Launchbox folder on the network share but loading the LB app from there did not work. I'll try going to Tools > Manage Platforms.

You might need to modify your network share permissions/group policies to allow executing apps from the network share.

[DanCue]

2 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

You might need to modify your network share permissions/group policies to allow executing apps from the network share.

That brings up another question. If I launched from the network share could I also launch from the main PC? Let's say I'm playing on the main PC and my son is accessing the virtualization. Can we both use that same app?

[Jason Carr]

1 minute ago, DanCue said:

That brings up another question. If I launched from the network share could I also launch from the main PC? Let's say I'm playing on the main PC and my son is accessing the virtualization. Can we both use that same app?

No, actually, not at all. In that scenario it would be rather important to have completely separate/copied setups. I suppose you *could* use the same media files, but you're probably still asking for trouble if you're making any modifications. So I would recommend just leaving the duplication then. Not sure anything else will really work well.

[DanCue]

16 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

No, actually, not at all. In that scenario it would be rather important to have completely separate/copied setups. I suppose you *could* use the same media files, but you're probably still asking for trouble if you're making any modifications. So I would recommend just leaving the duplication then. Not sure anything else will really work well.

What sort of "modifications" could cause me trouble?