Help! Newbie questions!

[Bondo]

Hey guys,

Thanks for all of the help so far.
I converted over a Police Trainer arcade that was changed over from some Atari game (not sure which one, cab just has a bunch of Atari stickers).
It has a 25" monitor.
I'm using a new J-Pac and have most of the buttons wired up. I'm using an X-Arcade CP (got an empty one for cheap on eBay) with Happ buttons and 1 Happ Super and 1 Happ Competition (I'm trying to decide what I like more). I'll be building an actual CP later on, just wanted to get something working right away.

I'm using MicroXP .83 running on a Celeron 2.7ghz with 512mb ram (I had it laying around gathering dust). I have an ArcadeVGA v1 (9200 series) in it.

Now onto the questions.
I am having a hell of a time getting mame to work right. If I use a new version of MAME .109 and up the resolutions are all set for the games, but MK2 and MK3 are really slow.
If I use .99 I have good speed but the resolution is too tall.

I am using MameWah FE v.163.
I tried out Maximum Arcade which kept freezing when I got to my game select screen.
I also tried Mala. It worked well, I'm just trying MameWah right now because Andy seems to like it the most for the ArcadeVGA.

I've tried using the MAME Res tool, but I must be dumb cause it's not helping me out.

I'm just at a loss. Sorry this was so scattered. The main questions are:
-How can I get the resolution working correctly for MAME .99?

-I seem to have my resolution set incorrectly for my ArcadeVGA because when I have windows at 640x288 the control boxes in MALA especially are WAY bigger than what I can see, I've tried the low res mode, but it didn't seem to work. This is one of the main reasons I went over to MameWAH. Any ideas what I'm doing wrong. I have it set to 640x480 now so I can navigate.

-MK2 & 3 work fine on MAME .99, but MK1 is running less than half speed, but the heck. I've tried a number of different lower versions of mame and no luck, I ever tried fastmame to no avail. I also tried to cut the sample rate to 22050 and that didn't help. Any ideas?

-My PC setting must be wacked because while a 2.7 ghz celeron isn't going win any races I can't get it to run MK1 (see above) or NBA Jam. Same deal, let me know of any ideas.

I've tried to research these questions and have come up with a few answers, but they didn't seem to help me out. I really was trying to work this all out myself without having to do one of these big question messages, but I know when to say uncle.

This has been been me for the past few days ---> 

In better news I did get Strikers 1945 working and loved playing it again. It actually gives me hope for this project.