Draco1962

Except to the Miss-us (spelled correctly according to my wife). She keeps threatening to attach a keyboard to her body so I will play with her more than my PC.

I don't think it will come to blows with a flame war like threads dealing with Microsoft vs. Apple vs. Linux... yar!

So far so good. Just looking a the loss as a needed intervention to rid me of my hoarding spoils. Sux that I have to reinstall my emus and redo my custom menus but was threatening change it anyway.

The failure of my 8800GT was the first in many years of using nVidia graphics adapters (1 out of 15 or a 6.6% failure rate - not too shabby). Overall, they have been very reliable for me. I have only worked with ATI a few times and driver compatibility issues were a constant issue. No problems to speak of physically with the cards, but if I can't use something reliably every time the wind blows or MS updates a service pack, well, it has to be replaced.

VIdeo drivers can cause some strange things to happen. OK for us to mark this one as resolved?

If you wouldn't mind posting a copy from each of your arcade cabs of your gameex.ini file (you will need to save as a text file to upload to the forum) and if you would label each according to cab that works and cab that does not. We will also need to know about your configuration - Windows version, 32 or 64-bit, machine specsz such as amount of RAM, video adapter, screen resolution, etc. Thanks!

I have had both, usually end up with nVidia as I am most familiar and comfortable and had the fewest hiccups. Just replaced my 512 DDR2 MB GeForce 8800 GT that died with a 1GB DDR3 GeForce GT440 that I picked-up from CompUSA for $90 and so far working like a champ.

I would verify that you are running consistant screen resolutions. It is possible that your GPU may not support 640x480 or less. I would set GameEx and my theme to run at the same resolution if possible, 1024x768 is fine for most. I noticed in the log file 3D Alpha Blended Animations are enabled. Try changing this to 2D in the Advanced Configuration utility. You may also want to experiment a little with the Tweaks/Performance settings and set defaults to those that equire the least amount of CPU usage. That may help to free-up resources for the GPU and minimize some of the display issues. As many will tell you here, drivers can still be a problem. I have seen it often where there are issues when a driver is upgraded from one version to another insteald of the old driver uninstalled adn new driver installed fresh.

If you can provide us with a copy of your gameex.ini file (upload here after saving as a text file, of course) and your log file. If you review the minimum specs, you will see that onboard video is generally not recommended. Another consideration when running an emulator outside of GameEx, you have less memory usage than you do with a frontend running in the background when the emulator is invoked from within the frontend. You may also want to consider upgrading to the latest direct x version your system can handle. Anyway, post your files and we can take a look,. You may need to forego some options and make some tweaks and, of course, there are no guarantees that we can get you the kind of speed you are expecting with the equipment you are using, but may be able to help make it better.

Well, things had been a little wonky here and there with some programs and within the OS itself (not confirmed but I think it may have been the result of an install glitch that occured the first go-around). Nothing critical enough to make it unusable or unstable at the time, but when the GPU began to fail, the instability reared its head. So looking on the bright side, a fresh format and install was probably on the way eventually. My PC apparently wanted to advance the schedule and keep me out of the loop until the end! As for recovering anything, it will be mostly reinstallation as most of my data was stored on the secondary drive and/or the MS 2003 server. Thanks again for the help offers and I may just take you up on copies of the recovery software at some point as I have had need in the past and will likely at one time or another in the future.

My nVidia GeForce 8800GT is no more - it started pixelating the screen and locking up and, before I could enact a full HDD backup to the secondary drive lost full viusal access. Repaced the GPU with a GeForce GT 440 only to find out that my Win 7 install was fragged and got stuck in the wonderful Repair Windows loop. Bottom line - whatever happened with the GPU happened at the right place and time to frag my boot index.. so - REFORMAT AND REINSTALL! Fortunately, I was able to get to a command prompt and save most of my graphics and had already moved all ROMS, Assets, etc to a secondary drive so just need to reinstall my emus and GameEx, re-download my themes... yada-yada-fraking yada.... Could be worse and has been so I am thankful for the lesser degree of worse than the major degree. Attendance will be spotty as I rebuild.

I was afraid you were going to say that - I guess I will need to get some really good and large console and handheld images (hint..hint..)

Agreed. However, if you have any questions regarding the Theme Editor there is also a Pinned topic here.

Is this what you had in mind?

Interesting. to be honest, I did not really dabble much with the default themes and went straight into V4 so wasn't aware of this difference.

I loaded the top bar middle, right, etc. into GIMP (the open source poor man's free Photoshop) and set the transparency to 100% and then resaved them in the theme. Since they are now 100% transparent, not an issue.

I run it as Administrator. Can you upload a full copy of your latest log file and gameex.ini (you will need to save it as gameex.txt as the IP Board software does not allow for uploading of .ini files). While Win 7's UAC is worlds away more forgiving than Vista, access rights are not always distributed equally. It is possible that the access rights on your D: drive are locked up a little tighter than you realize as I have encountered this with 7 on my machine with other programs. I have seen where some users similar problems due to a bad .net install or update. You may want to try reinstalling, in order, from .net 2 SP1 to the latest. I do not believe that option will become available as GameEx can be setup for use for multiple users with their distinct settings (themes, emulators, etc.) on the same machine (hence HKLM vs. HKCU).

Keep me in mind if you need someone to break, er, uh, beta test!

Glad to see I am not the only rolling stone gathering moss!

I can't say that I have had quite that same issue. I am running Win 7 x64. I don't know how much trouble it will be for you to do so but can you try installing and running from c:\gameex? My gut tells me there is still some sort of access rights issue at play.

My guess is that there are not very many other than possibly some of the "adult" games and possibly casino / poker games that one could use a touch screen to play. I managed to "Google" a thread at BYOAC forums that might give you a good starting point if trying to utilize a touch screen as part of a MAME cab.

You may want to take a look at the following: Steem - last updated 12/2006 WinSTon - last updated 7/2009 SainT - last updated 12/2009 Hatari - last updated 6/2010 ARAnyM - last updated 2/2011 (this runs according to the author similar to DOS Box. I have not ventured into ST emulation as of yet so cannot give a recommendation to any one specifically.

Are you referring to an item in list view or snap/vid snap view? I have only witnessed the item "growing" in snap or vid snap view. In the last them I put together (Sins of a Solar Empire) I did not use the default selector editor. Instead, I created one selector.png file and, using GIMP as my image editor, saved it repeatedly for each selector bar graphic. Before saving from one to the next, I decreased the opacity by 20% until I got to a 40% level, then increased subsequent opacity level increases back up to 100%, then repeated down again until all 15 selector images were created. This creates a neat pulsing effect as the selector dims and brightens against the background. I usually see the item that is Now Playing at the top and just left of center on my themes. I am hoping that this can eventually be a toggled on/off option that will also allow for placing within the theme in a location of choice the same as the rss scroller options.

I prefer working with the V4 themes as there is a little more flexibility (for me at least) and thanks to the latest changes to them can disable color-key and use true alpha channel graphics.

When it comes to editing and creating themes, you are looking at the central documentation in the forums. There is a brief tutorial I believe through the gameex.com site, but most of the knowledge is within the membership of the forum and trial & error.