Ok, I see this issue has been reported before (one example -
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=98573.0), but have never seen a solution posted.
I'm having this exact issue and cannot figure out why, it takes a good 20-30 seconds or more before cpwizard comes up. If I play a game, bring up cpwizard, and then exit the game, the MALA screen shows, but the game list is empty. If I press the escape key twice (once to bring up the "Exit Mala?" question, and a second time to cancel that question) the game list then populates.
Everything works just fine when I just run MAME and don't use MALA, CPWizard comes up almost instantly and there are no issues on exit.
I'm using WinXPsp3 with all patches applied, and have .NET 2.0 with sp2 installed. The computer is a Pentium 4 with 512MB of RAM. I'm using the "default" CPWizard option outlined here:
http://headsoft.com.au/images/cpwpause.pngThings I've tried:
re-installed MALA
re-installed CPWizard
beta (1.745) of MALA
self-compiled MAME (.144 w/ hiscore patch)
connected computer to network (normally my MAME PC runs unconnected to my network)
Nothing I've tried has made any difference, has anyone managed to fix this?
From what I've seen I really like MALA for a front end, it's nice and "simple" compared to the others I've seen. Same with CPWizard, I looked briefly at Johnny5 (apparently the only other actively developed alternative?) but it seemed more complicated to set up/use...
I'll post log and INI files shortly to see if that will help diagnose what's going on.