LCD Topguns - minor help needed!

[Turnarcades]

I've finally got my two LCD Topguns running brilliantly; calibrated well, buttons set and working great in MAME. 

However, If I leave them plugged in before I boot the PC, my PC hangs at the bios screen. It continues to boot fine once I remove the guns from the ports, but I don't want to have to wait until it boots every time to plug them back in. Secondly, I have my PC boot straight into Mamewah as the shell (rather than starting explorer with a clear desktop and having the frontend added to the 'startup' folder as some do). In order to have the Topgun control panel load before the frontend I have to do it the way I mentioned in brackets above, which isn't as clean.

So basically I'm asking:
1) Why is the PC hanging at the bios with the guns pugged in and how do I rectify this?
2) How can I keep my clean startup sequence (shell changed to Mamewah in regedit) and still have the Topgun drivers/panel load first?

[Ginsu Victim]

2) How can I keep my clean startup sequence (shell changed to Mamewah in regedit) and still have the Topgun drivers/panel load first?

Do they work if you set the driver/panel to load from mamewah's startup_app_commandlines setting? Have you tried?

[Turnarcades]

I'm still using v1.61 which doesn't have a category for pre-FE program launching. I have now managed to set up a batch file so I can launch it minimised prior to Mamewah, but it kills the 'seamless' effect as you can still see the minimised box while Mamewah loads.

Is there a command line switch that can background launch it, or at least hide the Window completely?

Still need to know why it hangs at bios with the guns plugged in too...... anyone?

[Ginsu Victim]

Is there any reason for not upgrading your Mamewah version? I use 1.63 because of improved U360 support.

[Tim N.]

I'm still using v1.61 which doesn't have a category for pre-FE program launching. I have now managed to set up a batch file so I can launch it minimised prior to Mamewah, but it kills the 'seamless' effect as you can still see the minimised box while Mamewah loads.

Is there a command line switch that can background launch it, or at least hide the Window completely?

Still need to know why it hangs at bios with the guns plugged in too...... anyone?

Certain mobo chipsets try to boot USB and think your guns are a USB device they can boot from... Some are better than others... First steps to try are disabling USB as a boot device or changing boot order to make USB last or not at all.... Even then, this doesnt always work... I ran into this with one of my machines and bypassed it by adding a USB hub into the machine and plugging the guns into the hub... The mobo only tried to read the hub and not the guns... If you still run into the problem with the hub, try a different brand of hub (seriously)...Still no go, you are SOL on some chipsets.... I think this was touched on in the super long Topgun thread (not sure)...

[Turnarcades]

Certain mobo chipsets try to boot USB and think your guns are a USB device they can boot from... Some are better than others... First steps to try are disabling USB as a boot device or changing boot order to make USB last or not at all.... Even then, this doesnt always work... I ran into this with one of my machines and bypassed it by adding a USB hub into the machine and plugging the guns into the hub... The mobo only tried to read the hub and not the guns... If you still run into the problem with the hub, try a different brand of hub (seriously)...Still no go, you are SOL on some chipsets.... I think this was touched on in the super long Topgun thread (not sure)...

Probably why I missed it, as I gave up on that thread after the millionth post! I disabled USB boot in bios but no joy, nor with my USB hub. I will try one off my mate else I guess I'm stuck.

Is there any reason for not upgrading your Mamewah version? I use 1.63 because of improved U360 support.

It means re-writing all the .ini files and then ironing out a new set of bugs. I've been using 1.61 as it's that version I use on the Turnarcades range and it's working brilliantly after some de-bugging over time. Maybe I will update it all soon. Until then though any more suggestions? Isn't there  a Windows command that can launch apps invisibly (like some of the background services in XP)?

[Ginsu Victim]

Other than using the startup folder? Not sure.