Error Reading Game List file

[leapinlew]

Periodically on one of my friends machines, he gets an error that says "Error reading game list file" on startup and Mala will not start. To resolve the issue I force Mala closed with Cntrl+Alt+Delete and delete the AllGames.* files inside of the Mala directory. After doing this Mala will start and after a refresh of the game list, all is well.

Its an older version of Mame (I think it's .7ish) with a complete set of ROMS.

In researching the error, I came across a post that mentioned something about the brackets being removed causing the error and another post about a John Elway game? I can't remember, but this time around I left all the brackets on it.

Any ideas?

[NOP]

the john elway bug shows up because of a bug in romlister. if your list(s) weren't generated by romlister then this isn't your problem.  I'm unfamiliar with the removed brackets issue.

the fact that it happens periodically is also probably not the john elway bug-that was a catastrophic crash 100% of the time.

[loadman]

Using the latest Beta version please enable debug logging level and send log next time it happens please