Mamehooker troubleshooting

[Dudeman]

Has anyone ever had any issues running Mamehooker? I've installed it on my XP machine and it won't run. It just starts and immediately stops. Nothing in the event logs, and I can't figure out if there is any debugging options when you start it. I've checked all the dlls and everything is up to date so I'm not sure what the deal is. I've tried running it in safe mode even and it won't run.

[Howard_Casto]

Ok dumb question, but have you checked your taskbar?

It automatically minimizes to your taskbar upon start up. 

[Dudeman]

Yup. I know it used to work, but now, nothing. I installed it and was using it for a while to get the outputs for Q*Bert figured out. Then I got off on other stuff, installed other apps, blah, blah. Decided the other day to actually hook up the knocker and it wasn't running. I uninstalled some of the apps I'd installed (TeamViewer, Linksys wireless adapter, AV) but it still just flashes. The MH logo appears in the taskbar, but as soon as you move the mouse over it it disappears. If I open Task Manager, I can see it start then immediately stop. I'm sure it is something I've installed, but I don't really have anything odd on here, just the usual stuff for a Mame PC. If I have too I'll take another PC of the same model (I've got another at work) and start installing apps from scratch until I find the culprit. I was just hoping there was a debug option, or maybe some supporting files I could check. I'm assuming something I installed updated a needed DLL and broke Mamehooker, which to me is more important than any of that other crap.

[Howard_Casto]

It's definately not something you've installed, rather it's something you are lacking.  

Let me get my list.....
(Note Some of these are Optional, but it's best to just put them all on)


Directx 8 for vb (dx8vb.dll)  Probably not needed as the code is converted to real dx once compiled.
Sapi  (sapi.dll)
GDI+  (gdi+.tlb)
Ledwiz (ledwiz.ocx)
inpout32.dll

hid.dll
setupapi.dll
xinput1_3.dll
oleaut32.dll
winmm.dll
user32.dll


The dlls in the first group should be included with mamehooker.  The rest are basically windows dlls so I don't include them.  That isn't an all-inclusive list either.  These are just the parent dlls.  Windows is a spiderweb of inter-dependancy, so you never know when one of these dlls will call yet another dll.

I will say this, I've got some pretty extensive error handling in mamehooker, you should at least be getting an error message as it dies.  Make sure you don't have a version of mamehooker hung up somewhere as two instances of mamehooker can't exist at the same time... the second just sends it's command line options to the first and exits.  


I hope that helps and Merry Christmas!  I'm off to Grandma's so I'll check in later.

[Dudeman]

 

I believe I've found the culprit. TinyXP.

I must be mistaken when I say it was working on this machine previously... it must have been the machine I used to compile mame. I took another PC, wiped it and installed just the OS and WinRAR, and Mamehooker won't run on it either. The icon pops up but disappears when you move over it. No errors... nothing.

Something must have been removed from TinyXP that Mamehooker wants. I guess I'll have to go with my full blown XP and clean it up myself.

Thanks for the help.

[Dudeman]

More info.

It's TinyXP Beast Edition... not TinyXP. Mamehooker will not run on Beast Edition II but runs just fine on TinyXP. I've been able to take a TinyXP disc and do a repair to a Beast install and got Mamehooker to work. Now to try it on my cab.

[Howard_Casto]

Sounds about right. 

I don't reccomend that anyone use those minimal installs for anything.  It is never harddrive space you are trying to save, rather you want to remove some of the process bloat. 

The way to do that is to open up task manager and research each and every process to see if you need it... then you turn them off or to manual, you don't remove them.  Then if a specific program is needs something from said process it can still be accessed, often automatically from the app. 

Remember that when these custom installs delete un-needed processes or programs, they delete all the dlls that go with them.  While the program or process itself might be useless, the dlls are probably pretty darn important as every windows programmer is going to assume you have them and write their apps accordingly.

There are all kinds of guides on how to do this for windows, XP in particular.

I'm not trying to lecture you or anything, just a FYI. 

[Dudeman]

Yea... I thought I had thoroughly tested to make sure that install would work for me, but I guess I missed something.