Game Ex Locking Up Computer

[DJ Infinity]

Hello,

Is anyone else experiencing computer lock ups using Game Ex with LEDwiz plugin and visual pinball going? I thought it was because of my Motherboard but I bought a new one and am still having the same problems. might I need to buy a USB PCI card to stop this?

[DJ Infinity]

No one is having this problem? I can leave visual pinball running by itself and get no lock ups but when combined with game ex leaving it running the computer freezes after a few hours. No one has had this problem?

[headkaze]

Is the plugin causing this or GameEx? Have you tried disabling the LEDWiz plugin?

[DJ Infinity]

Is the plugin causing this or GameEx? Have you tried disabling the LEDWiz plugin?

I dunno I'll try it and let you know. What's new in 2.4?

[DJ Infinity]

Is the plugin causing this or GameEx? Have you tried disabling the LEDWiz plugin?

Ok here's the results. I Came home around 1 A.M. and disabled the ledwiz plugin. I fired up game ex and a pinball table it is now 11:10 and no lock up yet. Normally a lock up would occur in about a hour or so. I'm about to leave for work and leave it going to see if it locks up. Thanx

[DJ Infinity]

Ok here's the results. I Came home around 1 A.M. and disabled the ledwiz plugin. I fired up game ex and a pinball table it is now 11:10 and no lock up yet. Normally a lock up would occur in about a hour or so. I'm about to leave for work and leave it going to see if it locks up. Thanx

Update when I came home at 9:00 it was locked up to the point I had to hard power it off

[headkaze]

Update when I came home at 9:00 it was locked up to the point I had to hard power it off

I have to admit it's a little relieving it's not the plugin as I don't really want to even look at that code again. Last update was a minor bug I found when working on CPWizard. The plugin shares alot of the code for dealing with Mame so I put the same fix in the plugin.

I'm not sure if you've done this but it would seem obvious to me to test VP outside of GameEx. Does it crash when not using GameEx?

Also make sure your not running a beta version of Visual Pinball or VPinMame if your using that as well. Download the latest versions from the vpforums.com website.

Also if we consider the fact your just leaving your computer running and then it locks up. Have you got sufficient cooling for your PC? Good ventilation? There have been cases with people having their PC's crashing and improving the cooling for thier system actually solved it. Your video card could be overheating, or your power supply could be dodgy etc. etc. So it's a matter of trial and error to locate what the problem is.

BTW It might be worth posting your GameEx log file too just so I can browse through and check out what components you have. Can't hurt anyway.

[DJ Infinity]

I have to admit it's a little relieving it's not the plugin as I don't really want to even look at that code again. Last update was a minor bug I found when working on CPWizard. The plugin shares alot of the code for dealing with Mame so I put the same fix in the plugin.

Well it ran longer without the plugin going was my point. (from previous posts) it took longer to lock up without it going.

I'm not sure if you've done this but it would seem obvious to me to test VP outside of GameEx. Does it crash when not using GameEx?

Also make sure your not running a beta version of Visual Pinball or VPinMame if your using that as well. Download the latest versions from the vpforums.com website.

Everything I have is the latest. When I run VP outside of game ex it runs till I shut it off.

Also if we consider the fact your just leaving your computer running and then it locks up. Have you got sufficient cooling for your PC? Good ventilation? There have been cases with people having their PC's crashing and improving the cooling for thier system actually solved it. Your video card could be overheating, or your power supply could be dodgy etc. etc. So it's a matter of trial and error to locate what the problem is.

I assure you it is none of that. I can setup tons of movies to encode. And the computer works fine. I also do not have my processor overclocked etc. Movie encoding is a lot more demanding than running VP or Mame. I think the problem lies within Game Ex somewhere. I also believe as Game Ex evolves the problem will be squashed somewhere down the line. I used to be able to watch videos and leave it running with the plugin on an older version, but as new versions of game ex came out lockups occured. So I am keeping the faith that somewhere down the line the problem will be fixed. Thanx for trying to help I really appreciate it. Have a happy New Year!!

BTW It might be worth posting your GameEx log file too just so I can browse through and check out what components you have. Can't hurt anyway.

[DJ Infinity]

Just thought I would post an update. Since switching to a quad core machine the lockups have stopped. I still can't leave it running for 13 or more hrs but the machine doesn't lock up to where I need to dao a hard power off.

[bkenobi]

My guess is you had bad ram on the other box.

[DJ Infinity]

My guess is you had bad ram on the other box.

Is that the "Catch All" excuse? Mame doesn't compile you have bad ram, computer locks up you have

bad ram. I don't think the ram is bad people cause if it were I couldn't do the other things I do at all at all I believe.

I'm sorry for venting but I think there are other reasons for stuff not working other than bad ram. I just built 2 new 64 bit computers Mame won't compile on either (64 bit compile) and that's the excuse I got. I'm a lil frustrated is all

[Brian Hoffman]

Well those are all symptoms of shoddy hardware... Though Id also think you would see bluescreens...

I'd be leaning on overheating.. A computer will freeze when it gets hot. Lets face mame isn't exacly app that wont abuse anyones pc and demand full throttle.

You have two pcs now locking up... Are you using the same case? is it in a CAB?

Sorry if you dont like the "canned replys" its just most of us have been there done that.

I hope you figure it out.

[headkaze]

I tend to agree with Brian here .NET applications are notoriously "stable" and rarely cause a system to freeze or crash "ungracefully".

Now when you say you run VP from GameEx and leave it running for a few hours I assume you mean your not playing the game, it's just sitting there running on the same screen right?

So how can it be an application fault if it's just sitting there idle? The application can't be causing the fault here unless it is constantly allocating or thrashing memory or causing a memory leak but that is highly unlikely (since that's a bug everyone would be getting and would have been discovered by now). GameEx has launched the VP application, it's not doing anything other than waiting in the background. VP is sitting there in a loop polling for user input.

So in conclusion it does seem highly probably that it is a RAM, overheating or hardware problem. Although I'm not sure if you said your running Vista or not but drivers are notoriously unstable in Vista or it could be some other software or driver or service running on your system. Have you got all the current Vista updates? SP1? And SP2 is on it's way too I hear.

Have you gone to the website of your motherboard manufacturer and downloaded all the latest drivers? Have you updated your BIOS and any other drivers you need?

You know there is alot you can do to help rule out what the problem is. But you need to experiment to eliminate possibilities. I worked as a computer technician for several years in a large hospital and what I learnt is that the "process of elimination" is the method to solve computer problems. Start with the most likely, and narrow it down until you find the culprit. Problems that "come and go" or are random in nature are the most difficult to identify and solve, and sometimes they require you to just replace, disable, uninstall or update something and "see what happens".

I remember a client once who's computer kept freezing. It was a brand new PC that I built for him. I re-installed the OS, I tried different RAM, and I was perplexed and the customer was getting a little tired of bringing back the PC. Eventually I replaced the motherboard which was brand new and I even replaced it with the same model and it worked a charm. That's an extreme case but these things can happen, and it took alot of mucking around before I discovered what the fault was.

[DJ Infinity]

I tend to agree with Brian here .NET applications are notoriously "stable" and rarely cause a system to freeze or crash "ungracefully".

Now when you say you run VP from GameEx and leave it running for a few hours I assume you mean your not playing the game, it's just sitting there running on the same screen right?

So how can it be an application fault if it's just sitting there idle? The application can't be causing the fault here unless it is constantly allocating or thrashing memory or causing a memory leak but that is highly unlikely (since that's a bug everyone would be getting and would have been discovered by now). GameEx has launched the VP application, it's not doing anything other than waiting in the background. VP is sitting there in a loop polling for user input.

So in conclusion it does seem highly probably that it is a RAM, overheating or hardware problem. Although I'm not sure if you said your running Vista or not but drivers are notoriously unstable in Vista or it could be some other software or driver or service running on your system. Have you got all the current Vista updates? SP1? And SP2 is on it's way too I hear.

Have you gone to the website of your motherboard manufacturer and downloaded all the latest drivers? Have you updated your BIOS and any other drivers you need?

You know there is alot you can do to help rule out what the problem is. But you need to experiment to eliminate possibilities. I worked as a computer technician for several years in a large hospital and what I learnt is that the "process of elimination" is the method to solve computer problems. Start with the most likely, and narrow it down until you find the culprit. Problems that "come and go" or are random in nature are the most difficult to identify and solve, and sometimes they require you to just replace, disable, uninstall or update something and "see what happens".

I remember a client once who's computer kept freezing. It was a brand new PC that I built for him. I re-installed the OS, I tried different RAM, and I was perplexed and the customer was getting a little tired of bringing back the PC. Eventually I replaced the motherboard which was brand new and I even replaced it with the same model and it worked a charm. That's an extreme case but these things can happen, and it took alot of mucking around before I discovered what the fault was.

This is an answer I can finally accept. And I can shed even more light on it now I replaced everything m/b RAM processor only thing that has remained constant is the case with power supply. It could be a power supply. As far as my quad core I left blitz99 running for 16hrs but Mame got stuck it was a simple esc and restart and all was well. Brian commented something else I aggree with. I think if hardware was shoddy I would have more problems. Case in point some of the computers I have now you can't run things like soundforge without them rebooting randomly. I think it's high time to replace said computers especially if you haven't added or changed anything to them and even reinstalling windows doesn't help. those are hardware issues. Thanx everyone. by the way I have it set if computer reaches a certain temp it'll shut down so I know cpu overheating isn't a problem. Maybe leaving a frontend running in the backgroud is too challenging for Windows XP with sp2 and 1GB of RAM maybe I should have more. cause without the frontend running it runs till I shuit it off.

[bkenobi]

Sorry you didn't like my suggestion. I only threw it out there because I had this EXACT same problem with my cabinet and ran through the other likely causes first. It wasn't heat, it wasn't PSU, it didn't seem to be the motherboard or CPU. The video card was brand new, so since everything else was built in and working, I tried different ram and guess what...IT WORKED!!! I thought I would share a solution that seemed to fix my setup with another person...my bad.

Now, to be fair, I have had a lock up recently that will cause me to look into other things again, but I still believe this is hardware related.

[headkaze]

My cab has a Pentium 4 3 Ghz, Windows XP SP2, 1 gig of RAM and I can run GameEx for days no problem I'm sure we would be getting dozens of posts about it if GameEx couldn't run for a long time on a mid range PC.

If your power supply is the only thing you havn't tried replacing yet... hmmm that reminds me of the cheap case I bought for my cab. It's power supply died in a few months. You don't have a cheap case and/or power supply do you?

I'm not sure if your running GameEx on a cab, but those things can get hot if they don't get some sort of air flow. I have my cab well ventilated with 2 12cm fans at the back. A point in case recently was someone who had their machine freezing all the time. Someone asked him about ventilation and he put in a fan I think it was and the freezing went away.

You'd be suprised how machines can sometimes malfunction like the first "bug" in a computer was a real bug (a moth)

[DJ Infinity]

My cab has a Pentium 4 3 Ghz, Windows XP SP2, 1 gig of RAM and I can run GameEx for days no problem I'm sure we would be getting dozens of posts about it if GameEx couldn't run for a long time on a mid range PC.

If your power supply is the only thing you havn't tried replacing yet... hmmm that reminds me of the cheap case I bought for my cab. It's power supply died in a few months. You don't have a cheap case and/or power supply do you?

I'm not sure if your running GameEx on a cab, but those things can get hot if they don't get some sort of air flow. I have my cab well ventilated with 2 12cm fans at the back. A point in case recently was someone who had their machine freezing all the time. Someone asked him about ventilation and he put in a fan I think it was and the freezing went away.

You'd be suprised how machines can sometimes malfunction like the first "bug" in a computer was a real bug (a moth)

Ventilation was and has never been an issue. I put fans in ewvery hole I can find I think it may be the power supply. I am slowly getting away from single core machines. I have read on various message boards for example a game like Galaga 88 runs sluggishly on single core machines now. I'll replace the power supply eventually. It's just weird that with no frontend running it'll go till I shut it off. I think this goes down as unexplainable phenomenon. BTW Headkaze thanks for the led-wiz plugin update. playing Berzerk the lights would go off in the boot up sequence and not come back on.