GameEx crashes when selecting any non-MAME emulated game

[mrdehate]

Hey everybody, I've started having an issue recently that's causing GameEx to crash whenever I choose an emulated game. It's not when actually trying to play the game, it crashes with the following exception when I pick a game from the list:

22:34:59.1  1/24/2009:  Value cannot be null.
Parameter name: input
22:34:59.2  1/24/2009:     at System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Replace(String input, String replacement)
   at System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Replace(String input, String pattern, String replacement)
   at k.b(String A_0, Boolean A_1, Boolean A_2, Boolean A_3, String& A_4)
   at k.k()
   at k.al()
22:34:59.2  1/24/2009:  Trying reinitialising the display after sleeping for 4 seconds
22:34:59.2  1/24/2009:  Exception count will be dropped to 15
22:35:04.8  1/24/2009:  --**--
22:35:04.8  1/24/2009:  21 Consecutive Exceptions Occured: Exiting
22:35:04.8  1/24/2009:  Closing database connection
22:35:04.9  1/24/2009:  First Exception:
22:35:04.9  1/24/2009:  Index was outside the bounds of the array.
22:35:04.9  1/24/2009:     at k.a(Boolean A_0, Int32 A_1, String A_2, String A_3, String A_4, Boolean A_5, Boolean A_6, Boolean A_7, Boolean A_8, Boolean A_9, Boolean A_10)
22:35:04.9  1/24/2009:     at k.b(String A_0, Boolean A_1, Boolean A_2, Boolean A_3, String& A_4)
22:35:04.9  1/24/2009:     at k.k()
22:35:04.9  1/24/2009:     at k.al()
22:35:04.9  1/24/2009:  Last Exception:
22:35:04.9  1/24/2009:  Value cannot be null.
Parameter name: input
22:35:04.9  1/24/2009:     at System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Replace(String input, String replacement)
22:35:04.9  1/24/2009:     at System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Replace(String input, String pattern, String replacement)
22:35:04.9  1/24/2009:     at k.b(String A_0, Boolean A_1, Boolean A_2, Boolean A_3, String& A_4)
22:35:04.9  1/24/2009:     at k.k()
22:35:04.9  1/24/2009:     at k.al()

I'm running the latest version of GameEx, 9.80 on a Windows XP SP3 box. I'm not exactly sure when this issue started, as I haven't tried to play an emulated game in the last few months (MAME games work fine). The only other issue that I've had recently is with the last update, GameEx reported there was a new version every time I started up. I manually installed overtop of my previous installation and that problem went away.

My best guess is it's something to do with the recently-updated emulator databases, but that's really just a guess. I've had the problem with any kind of system I've tried (NES, Genesis, SNES, Odyssey, anything).

Things that I've tried to fix the issue:

* Downloading new copies of the databases and manually copying them over

* Deleting the EMU_X.dbcache/.dbcacheini/.map files

* I've even tried doing a totally fresh install and copying over my GameEx.ini file

* Set the emulators to not use any database (at least the emulator that I'm choosing, I haven't gone through and removed all of them at once)

Nothing seems to work. The only success I had was after restarting my PC once, I was able to access any games I wanted to - everything worked fine. I quit GameEx and started it back up again, and failure continued. Further restarts didn't cause any more success. I can't figure out why it worked that one time, but it did, and it was strange.

Has anybody seen this problem before? I'm not real excited about the possibility of re-doing all my config, as it was a fair amount of work to get everything setup the first time. I've attached my GameEx.ini file as well as the full log. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!

log.txt

GameEx.ini.txt

[Tom Speirs]

Thanks for providing a detailed and very correct post of your issue.

I have had a little look at this, and will be releasing a new version of GameEx shortly.

It might fix the issue but if not please post the log again with the new version.

[mrdehate]

Okay, I tried out the new version and I'm getting some more strange issues. First, again I was stuck in an endless update loop. The auto-update notification came up, I told it to update, it did it's thing, and it tells me there's another update the next time GameEx starts. I tried duplicating the same issue as above, and I got the same crashing error.

So I downloaded a copy of the GameEx installer manually and installed overtop of the previous version - that seemed to work considerably better. The first time GameEx started, nothing about any new updates.

Onto the crashing issue. I'm not getting a crash every time I select an emulated game, but I am getting some strange behavior. The first time I pick a game from the list, it gives me either the wrong database information or nothing at all. That happens every time, regardless of what emulator or game I pick. Also when I hit the <back> link, it keeps me on the same page. Clicking <home> does work as expected. After picking a second game (without closing GameEx), everything seems to work fine - no crashing, correct database info, <back> works.

I did notice that GameEx does crash if I load an emulator that doesn't have any games available in the list. That and the <biography> link doesn't seem to produce results for the right system, but I only tried that once, so I don't really have any more information than that.

I've attached another log, if you're interested in seeing it. Thanks Tom for all your hard work!

log.txt