Stuck on "Please wait! Collecting games..."

[wmcmahon]

Hi, new MALA user here and am having some problems getting this application to see my MAME roms.

I've followed all the tutorials on setting up MAME and MALA including setting up the very specific directories, C:\Emulators\mala & C:\Emulators\Programs\mame

I'm using the newest version of MALA and the 0.147 of MAME

I stepped through the configuration with really no issues, pointed the config window to my roms folder, and hit OK after doing all the basic configuration.  At this point I had no ROMS in my rom folder.  After the configuration wizard it went through the proceedure to search for ROMS, it hung at "Please wait! Collecting games..." for a long time, but eventually got through it and MALA opened without and ROMS.

I decided to copy a rom into my rom folder, open the configuration wizard again and have it search for games as it did before.  This time it hangs on "Please wait!  Collecting games..."

When I open the "games list" tab, I see the "All Games" set, but no roms.  If I open MALA Gamelist Editor I don't see any roms either, I've checked the directories and they are pointed to the right location.

Any help in this would be greatly appreciated.   I would hate to switch back to another frontend.

[wmcmahon]

A little update before I head to bed, I decided to try to start from scratch with MALA, now it's stuck on "Please wait!  Collecting bios ..." immediately after the initial config wizard.

[wmcmahon]

Anyone have any thoughts?

[empardopo]

First, can you play that rom in mame?
Greetings

Enviado desde mi GT-N7100 usando Tapatalk 2

[rpgposer]

First, can you play that rom in mame?
Greetings

Enviado desde mi GT-N7100 usando Tapatalk 2

Agreed.  Have you tried to just run the game in mame without the frontend?

[breathsavers]

I'm having this same problem and I can run MAME no problem by itself. Mala just freezes up on "Collecting games..." Using latest version of MAME and MaLa on Windows 7 64bit.

[rpgposer]

I wonder if Mala is hanging while trying save the game list .xml via mame's -listxml command.  Have you tried to run Mala.exe as an administrator?  Try looking at the permissions in the mala folder structure to make sure they aren't read only.

[maximebeauvais]

I had the same problem. I take like 5-10 min the first time I run Mala (i have install and reinstall a few time).

If I have to do a refresh game list, same thing.

I do remember a few year ago that it was not like that. Not sure if it a new version of Mala the problem.

[empardopo]

In what format have you got your roms zip or 7z?
I think that there are problems with 7z.
Greetings

Enviado desde mi GT-N7100 usando Tapatalk 2

[maximebeauvais]

I'm 99% sure it is in zip format.

I have winrar and I do remember seeing the .zip

I will check that later.....and thanks

[Riffington]

I just had that problem when I was setting up MALA for the first time. I tried a few times with the setup but it always seemed to freeze while collecting games (I am using zip roms).

I looked at the various options and found a setting that solved the issue for me.
In the Main Config >> Basics (tab)
find the Rom path section. There should be a "Game Collection Options" button.
In here, select the option to Collect "Only games with rom found in rom folder(s)".

After selecting that, the game collection loading completed reasonably quickly. Give it a min or two just in case.
I guess it may have been scanning all my drives for games; which could definitely take a while to do.

Hopefully this will work for you as well.

[loadman]

...and enable the logs at debug level that you will see what MaLa is getting stuck on

[BadMouth]

Mame.xml has become so gigantic, I think it takes many times longer than it used to.
Generating the main gamelist the first time on my i7 laptop took over 7 minutes.

Too many mechanical, gambling, & fruit machine entries that Mala has to churn through.