When switching to Big Box launchbox.exe stays in task manager

[Jayinem]

I just paid today for premium for the first time so still learning but I'm thinking what's normally supposed to happen is you go to Big Box then when you exit Big Box Launchbox is supposed to reopen? But my Launchbox is stuck in task manager but not opening. So when I go to launch Launchbox it says it's already open meaning I have to close it in task manager. Once I close launchbox.exe then it will allow me to reopen Launchbox by clicking on the exe. Any way to fix this? 

Even if I don't use Big Box launchbox is still getting stuck in task manager it appears it's not open but stuck there. 

Edited yesterday at 12:13 AM by Jayinem

[AstroBob]

Hey there! 👋

Welcome to the LB family! So when you close Big Box, the default behaviour will not automatically open LaunchBox. If you want to do that, from Big Box's system menu, there's an item called Switch To Desktop Mode which will close Big Box gracefully and take you into LaunchBox. 

Likewise, in LaunchBox, if you click the LaunchBox logo in the top left, there's an option to go straight to Big Box, without needing to close LaunchBox down first.

If you’re seeing the “Another instance of LaunchBox or Big Box is already running” message, it’s likely that the app didn’t fully close due to a background process hanging.

We’ve put together a guide that walks through common causes and steps you can take to resolve it:

👉 https://feedback.launchbox.gg/help/articles/0507346-troubleshooting-another-instance-is-already-running-error

If you continue to see that error after following the steps in that guide, feel free to reach out—we’ll be happy to help investigate further!

[Jayinem]

Thanks for the info, reading your guide it's likely because I have 1300 games and way more images than that due to mismanagement of them probably like 5000 images. I will try to clean it up. In the meantime I created a autohotkey script to at least taskkill Launchbox with Ctrl + Shift + B so I don't have to go into task manager and close it, it works okay. 

One more issue I have the controller set to work in Big Box and it works but too well, it keeps working in Big Box when I'm playing a game so it interrupts the game and goes back to Big Box. Is there a setting to fix this? 

Edited 17 hours ago by Jayinem

[Jayinem]

Yeah this is weird behavior and I looked through all of the settings there was nothing that I found about preventing the controller from working if Big Box is not focused. In fact I'll have Big Box open and be typing something in notepad and it'll just switch focus to Big Box and even in a game it switches focus even though I pressed nothing, and also buttons I'm hitting in the game are being read in Big Box.

I am on a Launchbox that's 4 or 5 years old I tried to update today I copied all the info from the data folder but about 500 of my games were missing and many covers that I personally made it just won't work for me to update with these issues. 

[JoeViking245]

I can't say why whatever's happening is happening the way it is. But I can say Big Box, as an exclusive fullscreen application is not designed to be used as a multitasking app.  As you've noticed, you can to a degree, multitask. But it can have potential (and obvious) side effects.

If you really do need to do multitasking with Big Box running, I heard (never bothered to try it myself) you can create a virtual machine and run it in that. (You'd have to research how set that up, as I have no idea.) But it really does defeat the purpose of running BB in the 1st place.

[Jayinem]

23 minutes ago, JoeViking245 said:

I can't say why whatever's happening is happening the way it is. But I can say Big Box, as an exclusive fullscreen application is not designed to be used as a multitasking app.  As you've noticed, you can to a degree, multitask. But it can have potential (and obvious) side effects.

If you really do need to do multitasking with Big Box running, I heard (never bothered to try it myself) you can create a virtual machine and run it in that. (You'd have to research how set that up, as I have no idea.) But it really does defeat the purpose of running BB in the 1st place.

I'm fine with not being able to multitask, but it's going back to Big Box during games on it's own and when I press buttons in the games it's being read in Big Box. There's no way I'm the first person this has happened to right? I didn't even change anything yesterday was my first day having Big Box. I can disable controller if I need to I guess. 

I just launched a Super Nintendo rom through Retroarch using Big Box, the game booted fine then within one minute it automatically went back to Big Box, and keeps doing that every few seconds on it's own.

And some games launch minimized and it goes back to Big Box yet the game is working. All of my games in Launchbox launch fullscreen. 

Edited 10 hours ago by Jayinem