Mame games no longer launch from launchbox/bigbox

[retroD999]

Hello!

I have been using Launchbox for a few years. I have 2 cloned setups: one for my PC and one for my DIY arcade cabinet.

My mame games have been running fine for years, until today.
Suddenly they are no longer launching from launchbox on my arcade cab (everything is still working on my pc).
If I launch a game, I can see the MAME pop up screen with the 'Initializing' text, and then it just goes back to Launchbox/Bigbox

I can launch mame games directly from mame.
I have also updated my LB install to v13.0 (was using 12.4), and copied all the data files from my PC to the arcade cab, in case something got corrupted, but still no joy.

I have tried looking on the forum, but none of the posts I found applied to my case. 
I am not sure what else to try and how this could have happened, as I have not messed with the games at all on the arcade cab.

I though it may have been something that got screwed with my mame settings, but I am ruling that out as I am able to run games directly from the emulator.
Can anyone suggest something else I could try? The next step for me would be to reinstall the system on the arcade cab.... but that would take a veeery long time

Edited November 19, 2022 by retroD999

[retroD999]

So, it turns out it this was caused by a mame controller file that disappeared from the ctrl folder.

I have some additional command line options in launchbox for mame, one of which is telling mame which controller file to use (I have a plugin that I wrote that can switch between controller files and updates the emulator launching options)

Sorry for the post, maybe this can be helpful to someone else in the future that has a similar problem.