Weird problem with exiting zSnes

[Vynce]

GameEx crashes every time when I exit zSnes. The error message is "GameEx has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience. If you were in the middle of something, the information you were working on might be lost."

I have GameEx configured so that pressing two buttons on the gamepad simultaneously will send the 'q' key to zSnes causing it to exit. GameEx crashes right after zSnes exits. Pressing the 'q' key on the keyboard makes zSnes exit without a problem - nothing crashes. When GameEx crashes, there is no crash info written to the log file. The last entry is: Sending q to emulator. No other emulators crash when exiting in exactly the same manner. I just updated GameEx. The previous version that I was running was a couple of months old and didn't exhibit this problem.

I've tried removing the video snaps and changing to a different theme. Are there any cache files which could be corrupt that need deleting?

Hopefully someone has some ideas

Thanks

[Tom Speirs]

GameEx crashes every time when I exit zSnes. The error message is "GameEx has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience. If you were in the middle of something, the information you were working on might be lost."

I have GameEx configured so that pressing two buttons on the gamepad simultaneously will send the 'q' key to zSnes causing it to exit. GameEx crashes right after zSnes exits. Pressing the 'q' key on the keyboard makes zSnes exit without a problem - nothing crashes. When GameEx crashes, there is no crash info written to the log file. The last entry is: Sending q to emulator. No other emulators crash when exiting in exactly the same manner. I just updated GameEx. The previous version that I was running was a couple of months old and didn't exhibit this problem.

I've tried removing the video snaps and changing to a different theme. Are there any cache files which could be corrupt that need deleting?

Hopefully someone has some ideas

Thanks

I think I need to look at this. Are you saying though that you had ZSnes previousl setup fine with an older version. You upgraded and now its not working?

Please post the log anyway.

[Vynce]

The log, my config file, and my zSnes advanced config are attached.

Here's what happened as best as I can remember it:

Everything has been working great for months. Last night I performed an automatic update of GameEx. At around the same time, I installed the latest Windows updates (I think there were three of them). Before I restarted the computer, I tested out the various emulators to verify that they were still working. I tested Nestopia first and it worked fine. Next I tested zSnes. While I was playing the first SNES game the Windows update "restart your computer" reminder popped up and partially stole the focus from zSnes. The mouse pointer was visible in the center of the screen, but I could still play the game. I tried to Alt-Tab so that I could hide the restart reminder again. I then pressed Y or ESC or something. zSnes disappeared and GameEx crashed at some point during all of this. When I tried to start GameEx again, the screen was rotated 90 degrees clockwise and it crashed during the loading screen before the menus came up. I went into the configuration and changed the display rotation back to none. GameEx now started fine. Exiting zSnes via the controller button combination caused it to crash though. So I tried doing a full reinstall of GameEx by downloading the installer and installing it manually. The reinstall made no difference to the crashing. I then looked through all of the settings to see if I could find anything that looked wrong - I couldn't see any problems. I renamed the SNES Snap directory so that the video previews couldn't be found in case it was a video codec problem. This didn't make any difference. I also tried a different theme (the Default - Default one I think) which also didn't make any difference. I discovered that pressing 'q' on the actual keyboard exited zSnes without it causing GameEx to crash. I also found that none of the other emulators caused GameEx to crash when I used the gamepad button combination to exit.

Thanks for looking into this. Let me know if I can help.

log.txt

GameEx.ini.txt

Zsnes.ini.txt

[Tom Speirs]

The log, my config file, and my zSnes advanced config are attached.

Here's what happened as best as I can remember it:

Everything has been working great for months. Last night I performed an automatic update of GameEx. At around the same time, I installed the latest Windows updates (I think there were three of them). Before I restarted the computer, I tested out the various emulators to verify that they were still working. I tested Nestopia first and it worked fine. Next I tested zSnes. While I was playing the first SNES game the Windows update "restart your computer" reminder popped up and partially stole the focus from zSnes. The mouse pointer was visible in the center of the screen, but I could still play the game. I tried to Alt-Tab so that I could hide the restart reminder again. I then pressed Y or ESC or something. zSnes disappeared and GameEx crashed at some point during all of this. When I tried to start GameEx again, the screen was rotated 90 degrees clockwise and it crashed during the loading screen before the menus came up. I went into the configuration and changed the display rotation back to none. GameEx now started fine. Exiting zSnes via the controller button combination caused it to crash though. So I tried doing a full reinstall of GameEx by downloading the installer and installing it manually. The reinstall made no difference to the crashing. I then looked through all of the settings to see if I could find anything that looked wrong - I couldn't see any problems. I renamed the SNES Snap directory so that the video previews couldn't be found in case it was a video codec problem. This didn't make any difference. I also tried a different theme (the Default - Default one I think) which also didn't make any difference. I discovered that pressing 'q' on the actual keyboard exited zSnes without it causing GameEx to crash. I also found that none of the other emulators caused GameEx to crash when I used the gamepad button combination to exit.

Thanks for looking into this. Let me know if I can help.

Could you please try replacing the following file in the GameEx folder.

PlayVideoDLL.zip

[Vynce]

I made a backup of the PlayVideoDLL.dll and replaced it with this new copy. Unfortunately, I still have the same problem.

There must be some slight difference between exiting zSnes directly and having GameEx intercept a button combo that sends a keystroke to zSnes that makes it quit that's causing GameEx to crash in the one case.

[Tom Speirs]

I made a backup of the PlayVideoDLL.dll and replaced it with this new copy. Unfortunately, I still have the same problem.

There must be some slight difference between exiting zSnes directly and having GameEx intercept a button combo that sends a keystroke to zSnes that makes it quit that's causing GameEx to crash in the one case.

Sorry, I really have no ideas on this at the moment. It must be some kind of conflict somewhere.

[Vynce]

Thanks for trying.

I did a complete uninstall/reinstall/reconfigure of GameEx from scratch. This cleaned up a few files left over from previous versions that aren't used anymore, but the crashing problem still remains. At least we now know that it is unlikely that the problem is caused by a corrupt GameEx file.

Here's something interesting that I discovered. I usually have the zSnes exit key set to 'Q' in the zSnes settings. I then use an advanced emulator config that sends the 'q' key when a button combination on the gamepad is pressed:

Enabled=True
MapBack=False
MapEscape=False
KeysToSendOnExit=q
EmuWaitForKeys=True

Process1=
Process2=
Process3=
Process4=

JoymappingEnabled=FALSE
Left=37
up=38
Right=39
Down=40
Button1=17
Button2=18
Button3=32
Button4=53
Button5=54
Button6=49
Button7=
Button8=
Button9=
Button10=   

MapGamePadExit=true
Left=
Down=
Right=
Up=
Button1=
Button2=
Button3=
Button4=
Button5=
Button6=
Button7=
Button8=
Button9=True
Button10=True

I changed the exit key in zSnes to 'W'. Now when I press the button combo on the gamepad to exit zSnes, GameEx still crashes but zSnes also continues to run. So it doesn't seem to be the process of exiting the emulator and returning to GameEx that causes it to crash. It looks more like the process that intercepts button presses from the gamepad or the process that sends the exit key to the emulator that causes GameEx to crash. Why it only crashes when zSnes is running, I don't know.

I have two USB gamepads attached to my GameEx box: a PS2 controller connected through a USB adapter, and a Nyko Airflo USB gamepad. Pressing the exit button combo on either of these gamepads causes GameEx to crash.

Maybe this will give you some other ideas on what the problem could be.

[Vynce]

I recently switched over to using Xpadder for all controls and things are working better than ever. Emulators exit more quickly, controls are easier to configure and more flexible, I even have mouse control in PC games now. I think Xpadder is a perfect compliment to GameEx.