Windows 7 - Admin rights / UAC nonsense

[Macguvyer]

Windows 7 64 bit user, trying to update from MAME 149 to 160. Getting some strange behavior that's driving me nuts.

First of all, the previous 64bit verson of MAME 149 worked beautifully with Gameex. Installed in a directory named "MAME" in the Program Files directory.

When I click on MAME64.exe in this directory, it just works. No UAC prompt, it just starts.

When I tried installing MAME 160 into a directory named "MAME160" in the Program Files directory, I get different behavior. Let's forget about Gameex for a second, which only gives me a black screen now.

The problem is in permissions or administrator rights or some damn thing. When I click on MAME64.exe in this directory, The UAC (User Account Control) screen comes up. Why does this new installation of MAME 64 require UAC when the old one did not? I think this UAC screen is what is stopping Gameex.

Right clicking MAME64.exe and running as administrator still brings up the UAC screen.

In fact, right clicking properties of MAME64.exe and checking the compatibility tab, the checkbox is in fact "run this program as an administrator". So why does the UAC screen come up?

Strangely, the V149 installation which is the same /program files directory, does not have "run this program as an administrator" checked, but yet runs fine without a UAC screen.

Any suggestions? I'm pretty baffled. I can install 160 in a directory on my desktop and avoid the UAC nonsense, but normally I would install a program where the rest of my 64 bit programs go, which is in c:program files. How did I get V149 installed in that directory before?

Thanks for any advice.

[Draco1962]

Not sure about 0.149 but I do not run into any issues with UAC running from a mame folder from the root of c: and run as admin. Certain location will continue to spit UAC prompts as they are protected areas for Windows. Just the way it is.

[DazzleHP]

Certain location will continue to spit UAC prompts as they are protected areas for Windows. Just the way it is.

This is the reason we always advise keeping your emulators out of any Windows system folders. If you use them you really are taking pot luck as some will trigger the prompt and some won't. If you really must use the Program Files folder you could always just turn the UAC off entirely. How you feel about that i guess would depend on how well your PC is protected, whether you own any meddling kids and how high your paranoia levels are

[Macguvyer]

Thanks Draco and DazzleHP. I did a pile of reading and I'm pretty clear on how this works with UAC, and how where you install matters. I do have kids using this machine and I think that UAC does make sense now that I understand it better.

I simply re-installed mame64 into c:/emulators and BAM, it works fine, no UAC nonsense. Well, to clarify, MAME works on its own, I'm having trouble getting it to work with Gameex (black screen despite carefully checking the setup wizard), but I'll continue troubleshooting and report back on a new post.

[tthurman]

Might want to give the verify setiup a run if you haven't already. Could just be one of those easily overlooked path typo's that gets pinpointed in short order.

[brienj]

I would sometimes have problems with HideOS becoming the frontmost program and making the screen black, so I created this program - http://www.gameex.info/forums/files/file/69-gameex-to-front/

I don't know if that is your issue, but if you set GameEx to launch my program when GameEx starts or right before MAME launches, it might solve your problem.

[DazzleHP]

In this instance, because you moved your MAME.exe i suspect Update List is the culprit. Did you perform an update after the move? I guess you wouldn't know if it was happening before the move due to UAC interfering I would give it a try. If not then show us the usual gameex.ini and log.txt after attempting to launch MAME, and we'll see what we can do

[Macguvyer]

I've done a fair amount of tinkering and still no success with this 64 bit MAME version. Again, to be clear, it works fine on its own.

In case it had to do with my ROMset being the wrong version, I now have a V160 split ROMset and I've updated the path correctly.

Did an update list, still going to black screen after I try various MAME games.

Attached is my log.txt, and GameEx.ini. Would love some further suggestions...

Thanks!

log.txt

GameEx.ini

[tthurman]

Have you tried an over the top insatll of GameEX?

If you're running the current version of GameEx you can download and install it over itself. Your settings should not be affected, as this is how the updates work anyway.

[Macguvyer]

Yes, I just did an over the top install, thinking this would work as well. No change. Goes to black screen for 2 seconds after I select a MAME game. Outside of GameEx, MAME works completely smooth. I've tried this with 64 bit MAME, 32 bit varients, and MAMEUIFX. This is coming from a guy who's been playing around with GameEx for 5 years. I'm totally baffled.

[tthurman]

Try changing your theme.

[Macguvyer]

I was crossing my fingers, but this did not help. Tried a bunch of themes.

Interestingly, when I install GameEx fresh, not overtop, but a complete uninstall, and then reinstall, then MAME works fine in GameEx. Only problem is that I lose out on my other GameEx installations that took a long time to tweak.

Something must be corrupt on my setup.

Any ideas, or am I doomed to reinstall everything from scratch? (Gulp)

[tthurman]

Just curious, have you tried running GameEx Lite just to see if the problem is there too?

[tthurman]

Just doing some searching, if you haven't done so already give B2K24 and nullPointers posts here a look.

[Macguvyer]

Just tried the Lite version, no change. I'll look at those posts, thanks tthurman.

[Macguvyer]

I followed through on the post you suggested, and the main points were related to making sure my ROMs were clean (they are, work fine from MAME directly), and that the MAME.ini ROM path matched that of what was set in GameEx. Both matched.

Thanks for your help. I may need to walk away from this for a few days. Or just start from scratch.

[tthurman]

Yeah, it was a reach for sure. What I took from that was perhaps many of your games had been tagged as bad during your attempts to get things working, and not working due to this. Upon further review it would seem they wouldn't show up at all. I've never encountered this issue, thankfully, but have seen similar topics come up every now and then. It would be great to discover what is causing this, as it seems so random, and a fix so elusive.

[Macguvyer]

I wish I could have figured it out, because I'm not one to walk away from a problem. I'm quite sure it wasn't to do with paths, or my MAME install, since it worked immediately with the brand new fresh GameEx install with the exact same settings. It could have been a corruption with some ini file or something, very hard to know for sure. Sometimes you get to a point where you just have to stop banging your head against the wall and start over.

At least this topic will be helpful for someone who discovers the UAC issues and the importance of where you install your programs to avoid that issue.

Thanks everyone for the help. I'm excited to be up and running a new install with MAME 160 with the new shader effects, etc. Looks great!