Thank you for the speedy reply.
Solved: As I suspected, it was something that I caused accidentally. It turns out that I had turned off the option to show "Update List" in the MAME category, and due to that, it completely slipped my mind that the option was even there. Silly mistake. The reasoning for disabling that option, as well as many other administrative or management settings, is because the cabinet is going to be used as a free play machine at public gaming/anime conventions soon and I didn't want someone to have access to those tools or features.
Thank you again for the help, much appreciated!