MAME game list (GameEx) Takes forever

[Owensct]

Hi all,

Got a question regarding when GameEx updates the game list. I had GameEx installed on my PC and something happend and the config got corrupted so I had to nuke everything and start over from scratch. When I went into MAME it said that there were no games as excpected and asked me to update to which I said yes. So it cruises along pretty quickly and hit 55% in about 10 minutes then it stayed at 55% for like the next 5 hours and was still there when I went to bed. I checked to ensure that it was still running in the task manager and not hung.

My setup is as follows:

I am running MAME Plus which is on the local machine. Mame Plus picks up my games fairly fast, (when it's just MAME), plus I have no trouble streaming video over the Internet or movies from my Terastation to the HTPC. In fact GameEx is the only thing I see any sigificant performance hits from when going from my network to the HTPC.

The HTPC is a Pentium 4 2+ Ghz with 1gig RAM, ( I need more I know) and a 512Meg Nvidia video card.

All ROMS are located on a network drive, (Y: windows share) which is hardwired to a 10/100/1000 switch (CAT6e) which in turn plugs into the gigabit port on a 2TB Buffalo Terastation, (so no wireless in the equation), total length of cable being used maybee 25 feet, the cable tests fine.

My ROM are setup on the network share as follows:

MAME ROMS

ROMS A-E

ROMS F-J

ROMS K-L

ROMS M-N

Etc

So in GameEX my ROM locations look like this

Y:\Mame ROMS\Roms A-E;Y:\Mame ROMS\ROMS F-J;Y:\Mame ROMS\ROMS K-L;Y:\Mame ROMS\ROMS M-N; Etc

I have tried using UNC pathing like I did with my music and movies ie \\192.168.xx.xx\Mame ROMS\Roms A-E and it doesn't seem to work, (unless I'm missing something).

I've tried just giving GameEx the top level directory ie Y:\MAME ROMS and it doesn't pickup the roms in the sub-directories.

Oh and yes I am running the latest version of GameEx.

What am I missing here? This is making me crazy, I'm afraid to change anything (add a rom, restructure a directory etc)because if I do I can forget about using GameEx or my HTPC for the rest of that night. I don't get it, this thing acts like I'm trying to pickup a list of roms located on the other side of the planet instead of in the next room.

Sorry to vent. Any and all suggestons appreciated.

Cheers,

Gordon

[bkenobi]

Have you tried running it with roms on a local drive? If it runs at reasonable speed, then it's obviously the network (somehow). If it's still slow, then it's got to be the configuration of GameEx (or something else local to that machine). My guess is that it has to do with latency of the network, but I'm not an IT expert.

[Tom Speirs]

This problem is normally related to the version of MAME, and not a performance issue is such. GameEx is crashing trying to update the list by the sound of it. Otherwis turn off the option to verify the roms. This can take time over a network, and is something that MAME does not do normally, hence why GameEx is slower.