[RESOLVED] CP Buttons become unresponsive after a few minutes in gameex..

[aldub516]

Hey all. As always you have been detrimental to my progress in building the perfect arcade machine. Im currently nearing the end of my build, which is the hardest as im now pinning down all the fine details, as well as dealing with the endless new problems, so ill tackle them one by one.

I am currently running gameex, with the wood theme. Before you point out that i have not included my logs or other gameex files, i dont believe that the logs or such would help.. if that is false i shall upload my logs asap.. since my cabinet is not hooked up to internet, its someone of a hassle to bounce everything between usb drives and computers, so here goes

Recently, as i start up gameex, everything works fine. Im running an ultimate io ipac. All controls work, menus, no problem. BUT, it seems that after scrolling through my game menu for a few minutes, wheter continuous scroll, or one by one with the joystick, after a minute or 2, i lose responsiveness. No buttons, joysticks, or even my keyboard will work at all, although my trackball and spinner do work. I have to unplug my ipac and replug it in and it works again. With that being said, i have not encountered this problem during game play. ONLY when browsing lists do i eventually lose functionality. I cannot replicate this in regular mame, or anywhere else. Im led to believe perhaps its a sticky keys TYPE of situation going on within the settings of gameex or my pc, where repetitive use of the joystick is causing a weird reaction, but have no idea. I did not have this problem in the past and it recently started. Again please let me know if my logs and such are needed, but seeing as everything becomes responsive after un plugging and re plugging the ipac, it doesnt seem like gameex is crashing. Id blame it on the ipac, but it does not do this in regular mame, and i also never lose trackball/spinner use. Thank you in advance for the help.

[aldub516]

to add this, something else i realized just now.. if the controls dont completely freeze, then they get stuck on whatever button i was using. Example, just now i was holding the down joystick to see if i can pinpoint a certain time when the freeze would happen. After making it through most of the list, i began tapping down one by one to go down the list. Eventually the down just stuck and the list would just keep going down until it hits the end. I cannot interrupt this or stop it and afterwards, lose all responsiveness again. Id like to figure out if this is software or hardware related, but again, i cannot replicate this in mame or any other program

[Draco1962]

Yes. Your gamex.ini and log.txt files, please.

[aldub516]

coming right up.... thank you for the reply

[aldub516]

[Draco1962]

Do you have a touchscreen on your rig? If not, search for the Touchscreen settings in Setup Wizard and disable the setting and restart GameEx. Do this even if you do as you will need to rule-out this as a possible cause. Please report back one way or the other. Thanks!

[aldub516]

My touchscreen setting were already disabled, so i enabled and re-disabled just for the hell of it. Started gameex, and scrolled through my whole game list up and down multiple times, basically trying trying to freeze it, but it worked fine. I then tried to scroll with the trackball, and it completely froze everything. Where as before only the buttons and joysticks and keyboard would freeze, i now froze the trackball as well. As always unplugging and replugging the ipac fixes it all

Here is the big problem, there is no consistency. I restarted gameex, and the very first thing i did was scroll with the trackball which INSTANTLY froze everything, so i figured maybe its the trackball? But after restarting gameex yet again, i am scrolling with the trackball with no problem. infact minus this one time, the trackball has never froze.. There is no constant in this trouble shoot. Sometimes the joys and keys work for a few minutes before freezing, and now they worked fine until i touched the trackball.. then i tried only using a trackball which froze, and now im on my 5th try, and the trackball is working fine

One thing i noticed was that i was able to ctrl tab, and would see my mouse cursor for a moment, so im thinking maybe somethings happenening in the backround? As im typing this im currently hitting every button, key and track ball i can to "break" it, and now its working fine.. but clearly this inconsistency is unacceptable. Its just tough to trouble shoot as i cant tell if its the pc falling into a weird error with all the inputs, if its the ipac jamming up, or if its gameex itself.. Would it help if i uploaded the ini and logs every time something different affects it? Ie trackball, or buttons etc

edit:: it might be worth noting that i now recall i unplugged my spinner a few weeks ago because it was freezing everything, so my spinner is currently not connected.. but that is what initially started freezing for me.

[Draco1962]

Odd as the Touchscreen in the gameex.ini you posted shows enabled. I'm not familiar with the ipac but I am betting that the behavior will not show if disconnected and testing with a keyboard and mouse. Have you checked the Windows Event Viewer to see if any software or hardware errors are appearing during the times when the behair is occurring?

[aldub516]

yet another update.. i plugged my spinner back in to see how it would work.. it INSTANTLY froze twice in a row while using it to scroll through my menu.. and now on my third unplug/replug of the ipac, its working flawlessly. Non of this makes sense and i dont know where to begin to properly troubleshoot this. When i first put together my pc, led blinky was causing weird problems, until id unplug the power connector. But that stopped troubling me with some tweaking. Theres just so many variables going into this that im lost. One thing freezes everything multiple times, then works fine, while a new thing would freeze everything.

[aldub516]

I will trouble shoot with only a mouse and keyboard, but as i said, sometimes the keyboard inputs freeze it, sometimes its flawless.. likewise with the trackball and spinner. At the time of writing this, my whole cp works flawless.. buttons, joys, trackball, spinner.. no freezing. But again, the inconsistency is unacceptable. Ive never really used event viewer, but will check into that. As for touchscreen showing up in my ini, i cant explain that..

[aldub516]

sorry for the multiple updates, but i am literally getting different actions with everything i do. Currently, i started arkanoid to test my spinner. As i began to play, the spinner was not working, but my joystick was (this can just be mapping errors as i never fully set up my spinner properly for games) but as i started to use the joystick, my screen went black/gameex minimized itself.. i alt-tabbed to see if i can navigate through windows, and now it seems gameex/mame is somehow in window mode????? Im now thinking my inputs are causing something funky to happen in the backround of the pc

[Draco1962]

If necessary you can manually edit the gameex.ini in Notepad and change EnableTouchScreen=True to EnableTouchScreen=False

I don't think that it is GameEx as the direct cause of the issue, but it may not be interacting well with whatever is taking place in the environment. Reinstalling any software for the I-PAC may be another avenue or seeing if there are any updates or issues reported with the version that you have.

[tthurman]

Have you checked for an ipac firmware update? 19 is the most recent version.

May not be a bad idea to run system file checker to make sure it's not something weird with your usb controller, or perhaps try Fix-it. (Only recently have I used this, and it fixed a problem with updating not working until right after a reboot)

It's not apples to apples, but my ipac2 doesn't exhibit this behaviour.

My Happ trackball, and GGG spinner plug in individually to other usb ports.

[aldub516]

I am turning in for the night before I shoot myself. This is gonna be a long headache I feel. I will update tomorow with progress. Thank you so much for your quick responses, didn't wanna just disappear without an update. Thanks again, and tomorow I shall be back at it. I'll try all above suggestions and starting "fresh" on software installs

[aldub516]

Hey guys. Back at it. So ive basically made no progress. I updated my firmware on the ipac but that was already at 19. I updated gameex to 14 (i have to buy a new membership this week as mine appears to have expired) I tried different usb ports. I changed themes in gameex, and also manually changed the touchscreen in my ini. I am still running into endless problems. The spinner seems to be the worst of freezing the menus, but randomly the trackball will instantly freeze it. Sometimes before it freezes the pc will make the sound of the usb unplugging, and replugging, as if its randomly losing connection..But sometimes the sound does not happen. I unplugged the power supply to the leds as the leds/led blinky seemed to cause issues earlier in my programing. That seems to have no real effect as i still freeze up. Although sometimes now, say after i unplug and replug my ipac in after a freeze, my leds will be very dimmed/flickering. This happens sometimes and will stay, or sometimes go back to full color after yet another replugging of the usb. Im at a loss for ideas. if there are any windows logs, or anything i can provide to help trouble shoot.. i really dont know where to begin. Wheter the gameex environment, or windows environment. This issue does not happen in mame or anything else except gameex

[aldub516]

would even a video help? To show you all the weird actions, from freezing to the lights dimming?

[Draco1962]

Not sure a video would be of much help, to be honest. I can envision what you are saying is occurring easy enough. There are quite a few members with GameEx using I-PACs and the like and, if GameEx was the true culprit, we would be inundated with reports. That the devices are making the device unjoin/join sounds makes me wonder if you aren't experieincing some sort of bad voltage issue. What kind of power supply do you have and what is the wattage? What type of motherboard and chipset? RAM? GPU? Is the machine overclocked?

[aldub516]

psu is corsair cx 600m running msi z97 pc mate, with 4 gigs and no video card. this issue was not happening before, until as far as i can tell when i finally mounted everything into my cabinet.

[tthurman]

I'm with Draco, the random nature sounds like something else is causing problems. I it had any sort of repeat pattern, I would think otherwise.

I just had a paried set of Crucial DDR3 suddenly develop a failed stick, and while it wasn't obvious at first that's what it was, memtest sure found it in a hurry. Might want to let that run for an hour or so and see if it finds anything (the built in windows test is worthless IMO)

<edit> it crashed all the time, but never the same way, sometimes immediatley, sometimes 5 minutes after reboot, next time 15.

<edit 2> I went through this with my dads i5 build running onboard video, and it was bad mushkin memory in this case too. Seems the onboard video is particularly picky, and will show any weakness. His machined would run days if it was just idling, but put it to task with anything video related and it was crash and burn, with all sorts of strange anomalies! I'd go through the process though, and go grab the latest reference driver from Intel/AMD just to rule out driver issues. I think troubleshooting the memory is where I'd start after that exercise though.

Edited December 24, 2014 by tthurman

[aldub516]

thank you.. i shall go ahead and dabble with that now.

[tthurman]

You've likely ran it many times in the past, but just in case:

Download the iso, burn it, boot to it, and go watch a movie while it "does its thing"

Good luck!

[Draco1962]

Did you just put the PC case in the cab? If so check your temps to make sure you are not overheating. If your components are bare mounted, again, check temps, air flow, and make sure that they are not grounding out because something is in contact with a conductive surface.

[aldub516]

I ran memtest for an hour and a half with multiple passes. Came up with zero errors. I have just the components mounted inside, but I can't find anything shorting or making contact. Again, this problem is ONLY replicated in gameex so I can't think that something is wrong with the mounting. The pc was a brand new build barely use and this problem was not happening before when I first started programming. I'm gonna try to strip the machine down and rebuild it and just start from scratch on the software.

[tthurman]

In looking through my config, I notice I do not have support for SlikStik enabled (as mentioned I do have a ipac, albeit an older model), might try toggling that one off.

Note that this should also give you the ability to toggle "Enable Direct Keyboard" which by default is enabled when choosing to enable SlikStik support.

just some ideas

Edited December 24, 2014 by tthurman
additions

[aldub516]

All ideas are welcome. I will be home soon to try that. Thank you for the continued ideas and support. I built a beautiful pedestal that's ready to rock and now I'm running into a million glitches in the home stretch.