Really *WEIRD* MAMEWAH problem

[Xochi]

Guys, I just "finished" my cab and am having a really odd problem with it:

I powered everything up and let the main OS GUI come up (Win 2K Pro). I ran MAMEWAH (which I had setup previously on the machine in the cab) and I tested it out using the cab control panel (IPAC based, also tested prior to install) and everything works great.

So far so good. Soooo, I decide to put MAMEWAH in my 'Startup' folder so the cab will go straight into MAMEWAH on boot up. This where it gets weird: with MAMEWAH in the startup folder, it launches MW on boot as I'd expect, but the IPAC (and keyboard on the pass through port) seems locked, no buttons on the CP or keyboard work to get any response from MW. I have to do CTRL-ALT-DEL on the KB (which does work) and kill MW to exit.

I tried taking it in and out, removing all other startup folder items, etc, but the behavior is always the same: if I boot to mamewah it appears locked.

Anyone have any ideas on what it could be or what I could try as a work around?
 

[TalkingOctopus]

From what it sounds like, I think that MAMEWAH is probably launching, but you are still in windows.  If you do a mouse click on mamewah, it would switch from windows to mamewah and everything should be good to go.

Unfortunately, I do not have a good solution for this problem.

[EndTwist]

So basically, it sounds like MAMEWAH is losing focus after starting? If that is so, you/someone could make a program that sets focus back to MAMEWAH on startup. (in VB for example)

[MrSaLTy]

If loosing focus seems to be the problem, you could prolly confirm this by hitting
ctrl-alt-del and from there hit task manager.... then on the applications screen,
choose mamewah and then choose switch to.

If it switches to mamewah and all is well... then that is the problem.  I don't know how to fix it though.
Maybe of there was a way to make it wait a bit before starting.... it may be that the os and other programs are still loading and they somehow grab focus.  Anyways..... good luck.

[sac01]

I had a problem like this before, try changeing the order of stuff in your startup folder, make sure mamewah is the last to get loaded...

worked for me

[TheGatesofBill]

I don't know if this is possible under win2k, but on win98 you can change your shell to MAMEWAH.

[liquid8]

If it's in a cab, you definitely want to change it to your shell, unless you do other things on there...

for Win2k:

run Regedit
Find HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

Change the shell value to your mamewah executable..
You can also do this for CURRENT_USER

If you are planning on still using windows.. run msconfig to get rid of other startup items that are not in your startup folder...

LiQuiD8

[)p(]

sometimes loosing focus can happen to programs that are run from the startup folder when the "keep the taskbar on top of other windows is checkes" , uncheck it that probably will sove this focus issue...

peter

[Zombie]

yup, had this problem too.
MAMEWAH loosing focus.
fixed it by disableing some services with msconfig and uninstalling un-needed apps.

its all working now, so its possible to fix (im using WinXP btw.)

[jakejake28]

for Win2k:

run Regedit
Find HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

Change the shell value to your mamewah executable..
You can also do this for CURRENT_USER

i'll assume this is the same for WinXp, riht?

[liquid8]

for Win2k:

run Regedit
Find HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

Change the shell value to your mamewah executable..
You can also do this for CURRENT_USER

i'll assume this is the same for WinXp, riht?

yes, XP is the same...

LiQuiD8

[Xochi]

It sounds like the focus issue is probably what I'm seeing. I actually use a TweakUI setting to give focus to whatever the mouse is sitting on top of (this is like most UNIX GUIs which I actually use more frequently than Windows @ work). I'll try messing with that too, maybe it somehow is keeping MW from getting keyboard focus at startup.

[jelwell]

Did anyone ever figure out the problem here? My friend actually has the same exact problem. He's using MAMEWAH 1.61.

I tried clicking on MAMEWAH, I tried using the task manager to switch focus. I tried resetting my mamewah.ini and re-downloaded mamewah 1.61. MAMEWAH definitely had focus, but just wasn't responding to any of my keyboards or ipac (I tried a ps/2 and usb keyboard).

I did some testing but couldn't get it narrowed down exactly.
He had MAMEWAH set to boot as the Windows Shell. That didn't work.
I set windows to boot up and put MAMEWAH in the Startup menu. Same problem.
I set windows to boot up and then manually launched MAMEWAH. Still didn't work.

It seemed that the first time I ran MAMEWAH, on my friend's machine, the keyboard was always locked. If I force kill MAMEWAH and then run it again it seemed to respond to keyboard/ipac input.

So... I wrote a batch file that looked (somewhat like this):

Code: [Select]

WAIT 10 seconds
start c:\mamewah\mamewah.exe
WAIT 10 seconds
taskkill \IM mamewah.exe
mamewah.exe

Even this didn't seem to work. The script itself runs flawlessly, but MAMEWAH still didn't receive key inputs. At this point I wasn't sure what to do - so I switched to Mala. I swear that's not a threat. I still use MAMEWAH at home.

Anyone figure this out? The only odd thing in the mamewah.log is  a line that says decimal figure found "." - or something like that.
Joseph Elwell.