Games launch twice

[hydef]

I've had this problem forever but I've just put up with it. Games launch twice. No idea why it happens. I had a quick google and it seems people have had this issue before but I didn't see a resolution.

I wondered if my installation was somehow broken but after installing a new version of LaunchBox on a different drive, it's not.

Method: Installed LaunchBox 13.1, import ROMs from main menu - just one system, the NES. Configured an emulator to use with it, I chose the Retroarch.exe and the default platforms LaunchBox populated. Didn't change any other options. Press Enter to launch a game. The first time it opens 2 instances of Retroarch, once which plays, the other is paused. I close both. I launch another game with Enter, this time nothing happens. The 3rd time and onwards, a game will launch normally with only one instance.

This is also the same for any other system and also PC games, those will also complain that another instance is running, the 2nd time not work and the 3rd time run normally. Same goes for using double click to launch instead of enter.

Any ideas?

[hydef]

No one had this? I still can't figure it out.

[fraganator]

Hi @hydef

I've had this issue for a long time and never managed to resolve it. See this issue on the issue tracker.

The workaround I've been using is to launch a game with the Ctrl+P shortcut, rather than pressing Enter. This reliably launches the game / emulator once.

[hydef]

Thanks @fraganator, this oddly seems to work.

[Tittywaffle]

I think I’ve had this I thought my kid was just being impatient and hitting play multiple times. I think you can change what’s being launched can’t you, I was wondering about making a powershell script that will launch retroarch but if an instance of retroarch is already running just exit the script so if play gets hammered it doesn’t make any difference

[Tittywaffle]

Was actually easier to do it as a cmd file: 

paste the following into notepad and save it in your retroarch folder as retroarch.cmd 

@echo off
setlocal

REM Check if RetroArch is already running
tasklist /FI "IMAGENAME eq retroarch.exe" 2>NUL | find /I /N "retroarch.exe">NUL
if "%ERRORLEVEL%"=="0" (
    echo RetroArch is already running.
    exit /b 1
)

REM RetroArch is not running, start it with provided arguments
"C:\Users\Administrator\LaunchBox\Emulators\RetroArch\retroarch.exe" %*

 

*remember to update your paths accordingly if your user isn’t Administrator and you didn’t install everything to the default location. I realise I could have made it relative now rather than absolute but I can’t be bothered to fix that!

then in launchbox go to tools | manage | emulators | click on retroarch and edit | then literally under application path change the file extension so it goes from retroarch.exe to retroarch.cmd you just saved 

[hydef]

Hey, thanks very much. I haven't tested this yet (I barely fire this up any more) but appreciate it and will use it if I play again.

[Tittywaffle]

No worries, I appreciate it’s old but it’s the only thread I found and I know my kid is impatient but the other day he had 7 copies of retroarch running in the background 😂 definitely needed to sort something out. Be nice if they added a checkbox to prevent you launching more than one instance of the configured emulator