Mame suddenly slowed down, no idea why

[kvncooper]

Mame has suddenly slowed down - whenever I refresh the games list, it takes forever, when it used to take less than a minute. I can't explain it and wondered if there is an explanation?

[Rick]

Mame has suddenly slowed down - whenever I refresh the games list, it takes forever, when it used to take less than a minute. I can't explain it and wondered if there is an explanation?

Here we go.  Every question I can think of, spewed out as quickly as they come to mind.  (Nothing personal, I just drank a Monster Energy Drink, and I'm on a bit of a buzz.)

• How 'suddenly' is 'suddenly'?
• Has this happened in the past day, or has it been a process of slowing down over time?
• Has the computer been off for a week, and it might be updating?
• What has changed since it 'suddenly' slowed down?  Anything?
• Have you installed new games?
• Installed new software?
• Is this running on a dedicated MAME cab, or a generic PC?
• Is this attached to the Internet?  If so, do you have antivirus software?
• Do you have any 'scheduled events' (i.e. defragmenter or antivirus) which might have just started scanning your system?

Whew.  That's a lot of questions.  (If you don't want to answer any/all of them, please provide a tad bit more information.  If NOTHING has changed, and NONE of the above is the culprit, you might just have a hard drive on its way out.)

[kvncooper]

Mame has suddenly slowed down - whenever I refresh the games list, it takes forever, when it used to take less than a minute. I can't explain it and wondered if there is an explanation?

Here we go.  Every question I can think of, spewed out as quickly as they come to mind.  (Nothing personal, I just drank a Monster Energy Drink, and I'm on a bit of a buzz.)

• How 'suddenly' is 'suddenly'?
• Has this happened in the past day, or has it been a process of slowing down over time?
• Has the computer been off for a week, and it might be updating?
• What has changed since it 'suddenly' slowed down?  Anything?
• Have you installed new games?
• Installed new software?
• Is this running on a dedicated MAME cab, or a generic PC?
• Is this attached to the Internet?  If so, do you have antivirus software?
• Do you have any 'scheduled events' (i.e. defragmenter or antivirus) which might have just started scanning your system?

Whew.  That's a lot of questions.  (If you don't want to answer any/all of them, please provide a tad bit more information.  If NOTHING has changed, and NONE of the above is the culprit, you might just have a hard drive on its way out.)

Hi Rick,

1. I woke up, deleted a rom, refreshed, took about 2 minutes, and everything was good. About 30 mins later, I deleted another rom, refreshed, and the game update took forever. The reason I was deleting roms is because I was clearing out the games I don't use or don't like.

2. This has not happened in the past.

3. PC hasn't been off and is not updating.

4. Not installed any new games.

5. Not installed any new software.

6. Running on a generic PC.

7. PC is attached to internet and yes I have microsoft essentials and windows defender.

8. No scheduled events.

Just tried the F5 again and it's still very slow.

Also, just tried it on my previous version of mame (.126) and it was fast, like it always has been. Could it be a new mame issue? It wasn't slow yesterday though.

Thanks.

[HanoiBoi]

You just mentioned a previous mame version versus a new mame version.  How new is that versus the old...meaning how long have you been running the new version prior to this issue?

At this point, maybe you could boot to 'last known good'?

[DaveMMR]

In general, I find that I cause more problems deleting roms than just leaving them on there and using a custom list-type program to filter only the games I want to play.  Most of them take up so little space, it's not worth cleaning them up that way. 

The fact that the slowdown occurred when you deleted roms leads me to believe that may have been the root cause.  Can you just "undeleted" (i.e. restore from recycle bin) and see if that fixes it?