Games with period in the titles suddenly appeared

[RolandofGilead]

I have a portable LaunchBox setup I created back in 2021. I recently purchased a mini PC running Windows 11 and copied the LaunchBox folder from the internal drive of my old PC (which is on Windows 10)  to an external SSD. When I got set up on the mini PC, I updated LaunchBox to the newest version. Everything seemed fine. But today I noticed that some of the platforms have duplicate games with a period in front of the titles. There is no artwork and they don’t launch (at least the ones I tested). The games I originally imported are still there. I deleted a few of the games but they were back after restarting LaunchBox. They also show up in BigBox.

I also noticed a couple of other weirds things. Games from one platform were showing up in another. N64 has a bunch of NES games. Dreamcast also has files Track files showing. For example, .track01

I went through games yesterday when I first moved and updated LaunchBox and I don’t recall seeing these new files. I think it just happened today. Any help is appreciated. I can provide additional info if necessary.

Thanks.

[AstroBob]

Hey @RolandofGilead, thanks for reporting this.

Right off the bat, this sounds like LaunchBox is auto-importing some hidden files from your LaunchBox directory, given the fact that they are re-appearing once you delete them. Here's how you can verify that:

- From the options menu, confirm if LaunchBox has Auto ROM imports enabled. You can turn that off if you don't want LaunchBox to auto import your games

- If you want to leave it on, it's likely there are hidden files in your games directory. You'll need to enable hidden files in Windows explorer, and then check if your games folders if there are any temp files there. I can't say for certain but these may have been caused 

Let me know how you get on and if that is indeed the issue

[RolandofGilead]

Thanks. I turned off auto-importing and deleted some files. They don’t show up again after restarting LaunchBox. If I delete and reimport games, will it keep the metadata and artwork, or is that deleted? Also, how can I stop hidden files from being imported? I’ve never had this issue before.

Edited October 25 by RolandofGilead

[AstroBob]

3 hours ago, RolandofGilead said:

If I delete and reimport games, will it keep the metadata and artwork, or is that deleted?

If you delete game entry in LaunchBox, the metadata will be gone, however it doesn't delete the image unless you run the `cleanup media` option. So if you import it again, it will pick up the old media for you.

If you have auto-import ROMs turned on, LaunchBox will import anything in your games folder. The only way to stop it is either turn off auto-import ROMs, or you can turn of auto-import for specific platforms (this is new in 13.17).

However, it's probably better to clear up those hidden files from your ROMs directory. As I mentioned, I can't say for certain how they got there, but it sounds like those are temp files that could have been when you copied the instance over from your other computer. However, once you've cleaned them out, the LanchBox shouldn't re-import them.

[RolandofGilead]

I turned off auto-import. So far no hidden files have shown up again. I sorted the games as a list and removed all the games that imported from the hidden files, then used audit to filter by duplicates and caught a few stragglers.

I found that some games are not duplicates but have the hidden file in the application path. The ROM filename shows ._ before the game title. These are easy enough to find with an audit. But is there a way to edit the filename in the application path or will I have to reimport the games?

[faeran]

1 hour ago, RolandofGilead said:

I turned off auto-import. So far no hidden files have shown up again. I sorted the games as a list and removed all the games that imported from the hidden files, then used audit to filter by duplicates and caught a few stragglers.

I found that some games are not duplicates but have the hidden file in the application path. The ROM filename shows ._ before the game title. These are easy enough to find with an audit. But is there a way to edit the filename in the application path or will I have to reimport the games?

I'm kind of curious why your game folders are littered with unusable hidden files.