bkenobi

Why do you have to rebuild the .cfg files? Couldn't they just be changed to be compatible by parsing the current files? I would upgrade to the new version of MAME, but I REALLY don't want to go through building my input files again. Anyone want to upload a comparison of the two .cfg files to see the difference? I'm thinking that there might be a way to just write a tool to upgrade the old .cfg files to the new format.

First things first. Remove the command from the 'Run Last Game' batch file and verify that fixes the problem. Next, if that works, you will have to find where it is being called. It could be in the MAME.ini file (as iano suggested), or perhaps in the GameEx MAME command line options.

artwork is the command to display the bezel art in MAME. If you don't have the artwork, it will thow an error. There was a change in the artwork system a few revs ago that resulted in having to download new artwork files. Try disabling artwork (remove the command line argument) and try it again.

I've worked with changing the categories to something between Catver.ini and Genre.ini. I wanted something a bit more custom that still included the majority of catver, but lumped the tiny categories together in such a way that I didn't have 5000 categories. I ended up with ~50 categories with more meaning to me. Although this file is a bit old and probably could be updated quite a bit to improve it, this is what I've been using for a while. CatVer.zip

You know, I bet you wouldn't see anything unless you had show desktop turned on. In that case, my little app would be useless. Sorry, bad suggestion

Try putting a script to display a message box saying something like "running command after close" or something to see if it's doing anything. EDIT: Just use this file... test.zip

Glad to hear that you got it fixed. Too bad it was the most expensive of the possible fixes though.

HAHA... Okay, I can't really laugh cause I've done it too

He didn't say anything about updating MAME, but if that were the case then I could see this as a possibility. I know that there was a major change in the video output around version 0.104 that caused me problems. I had to change some command line options to get it working right. However, I don't beleive this caused any slow/choppy problems, just poor looking video. Anyway, as I recall, he didn't update anything but GameEx, so this shouldn't be the problem. Good thought though!

If it's a convention change, you could just use one of the above techniques to rename all of the appropriate files. For instance, if JUE is supposed to be W, then you would need to list all affected files and just change it to what you want via a batch file. Like I said before, this is something that I do with Excel to create the batch file, but I'm positive the DOS method Brian uses will work for you too! If it were me, I would probably just download an appropriately named set and not worry about renaming since the links were provided above. In fact, I may be doing just that myself.

Sounds like you've already put a bit of work into configuring GameEx agian, but I just want to reiterate that it is possible to just backup your old install and reinstall the new version overtop on your new machine. I personally haven't done this and don't mind setting it up from scratch since it's pretty easy and straight forward. If I had a bunch of emulators other than just mame and NES, I'm sure I would do it the other way though.

You should be able to disable this feature. I don't have it turned on on my cabinet as far as I can remember. Unless I'm wrong (which is likely), there is a setting in Enable/Disable Features about favorites.

It doesn't do it natively. I use Excel for EVERYTHING so I'm just use what I know. I can import the files, parse them, and assemble them the way I want pretty quickly. If you know DOS, then that works just fine too!

I don't think it will do it without a mp4 codec. As I understand, Windows Media Player is the backbone for the music playing capability in GameEx, so if you can get it to work there, it should be playable in GameEx.

I think Tom killed the TV support work a couple months back. If you read the thread it basically states that Vista does everything he wanted to do natively, so there's no reason to reinvent the wheel...

I've done it that way, but I used Excel to create the batch file. Your preference really since in the end it will just be a text file.

Yeah, that definitely looks like a refresh rate problem.

Do you have an extra HDD laying around? One option would be to throw in another drive and install windows to see if that helps. Another option that should work just as well would be to throw in a Linux bootable image like Knoppix. If you still have problems with the first meathod, I strongly suspect hardware. If you have problems with the second, it's definitely hardware! If the both the first and second work (or whichever you try), it's software related, but you might be able to get it going somehow. I usually say if it takes more than a couple hours to fix, it's worth the format and starting from scratch. There are a bunch of threads related to how to backup your GameEx install. If it were me, I would grab Knoppix and give it a go. If it works, then just format and reinstall from scratch! If you had it working a year ago but it won't work now, I strongly suspect some hardware is failing so that won't work...

Stu just wrote a fuzzy name matching tool for use with generating new databases including the descriptions like you are referring to. I suppose it would be possible to convert that tool to do mass renaming if there is no other tool already available. I would have thought GoodTools might have this capability though.

Yes you can do this from a joystick currently. Use the paging button and left/right to move up/down a page. Also, the newest version has a simplified interface that allows you to use left/right for paging and up/down for selection.

If you think the fan is dieing/is dead, open the freakin' case and check! That's not the type of thing that's worth running a program for. If it's spinning, then go on to finding the program. If you think it's running slow, you should also open the cab to get some airflow in while testing ESPECIALLY if you are running hardware tests like memtest and HDD intensive stuff like defrag!

I'd like to help, but I'm swamped with work on the house for at least the next week or two then vacation. If this is still going in September, I will definitely be available. In the interim, I'll see if I have a few minutes here and there, but unlikely. Either way, looks good guys!

Just saw this on Digg. link

Are you just going to leave us hanging?!

Just a thought, but could you post a picture to show what you are talking about?