Launchbox just keeps shutting down

[Mozzers101]

I've been having some issues in the last few months with the stability of Launchbox and I'm at a loss what I could do about it - if anything.

I don't get any errors or anything, the program just vanishes - it can happen without any input from me, it can be on in the background and just "pops" and goes. Speculating that it could be due to the size of library (currently at 37k plus games). Does anyone have any ideas?

I'm running Windows 11 pro.

[fromlostdays]

I doubt its the size of the library as I have significantly more imported into launchbox. Can you provide some more detail? When it happens, is launchbox just minimized? Is it closed? Next time it happens, check your task manager to see if launchbox is running in the background. Also, are you using / do you mean Bigbox? Pops and goes, I'm not sure exactly what you mean. Also can you provide your PC specs?

[Tsik]

   Hi, you can also try a fresh "test" installation to a separate location, and see what it does there.
Just take the installer from the Updates folder.
   Another suggestion is also to check your plug-ins. Try and remove them temporarily, all of them or one-by-one, to see if the problem still occurs. 

I also doubt that the problem is the library size.

Cheers 🙂

Edited March 28 by Tsik

[Mozzers101]

On 3/28/2026 at 9:36 AM, fromlostdays said:

I doubt its the size of the library as I have significantly more imported into launchbox. Can you provide some more detail? When it happens, is launchbox just minimized? Is it closed? Next time it happens, check your task manager to see if launchbox is running in the background. Also, are you using / do you mean Bigbox? Pops and goes, I'm not sure exactly what you mean. Also can you provide your PC specs?

Thanks for the reply. 

To answer your questions - the crash happens in desktop mode, not Bigbox. By "pop" I mean it just closes - no errors, no locking up, just goes. It can be my active window or minimised when it happens. I'll monitor it and check the background processes next time it happens and report back as it is rather sporadic.

My specs are: AMD 7800X3D, RTX 4070, 32GB  DDR5 RAM & Win 11 pro.

@Tsik I'll give this a go later and see how I get on.

Appreciate the replies from you both. I'll re-post when I know more in light of your tips.

[L4R63N7]

In case you never found a fix for this. I was having a similar problem until today. LaunchBox (not BigBox) would startup without any problems, but as soon as I clicked on any game it would close a few seconds later, with no error message. At least for me, the problem was coming from LaunchBox trying to play videos with FFMPEG. I switched "Options > General > Video Playback" to Windows Media Player and the crashes stopped immediately.

[Jabb3rJaw]

I was having the same issue like many users even using WMP. The new beta version seems to have fixed this after a full day of testing. 

[Mozzers101]

Thanks to you all for commenting. Like @Jabb3rJaw it seems to have largely fixed itself. Really appreciate the tips above though for future use so thanks to you all for the responses.

[Gaming.Zone]

On 4/4/2026 at 7:11 PM, L4R63N7 said:

In case you never found a fix for this. I was having a similar problem until today. LaunchBox (not BigBox) would startup without any problems, but as soon as I clicked on any game it would close a few seconds later, with no error message. At least for me, the problem was coming from LaunchBox trying to play videos with FFMPEG. I switched "Options > General > Video Playback" to Windows Media Player and the crashes stopped immediately.

I can confirm that this was what I did to get Launchbox to stop crashing.  Ever since they updated the video changes back in 2025, if I was navigating between games and the side panel could have a video in it there was a chance of it causing a CTD without error.  I am on the current beta and still have the issues if I turn videos back on.  Big Box has no errors.  I can live without the videos in Launchbox for now.