MameWah errors (corruption?)

[papaschtroumpf]

I'm really new to this but after deciding to build my cabinet I tried a few front ends and decided I liked MameWah best.
Unfortunately I'm having the following problem that may  make me look somewhere else if I don;t get it fixed soon:

The first time I run mamewah after install it works fine and I can use the front end to play my mame games.
After the first time though, mamewah gives me a run time error in the 70's (I think I have seen 70, 74 and 75, with an error message of "access denied", "file\path error", ...)
After this happens it seems that the only way to fix it is to re-install. This has a similar feel to the "corruption" that JoeB mentions a few threads back. I haven't tried comparing my config files before and after running mamewah the first and second time, and I'll give it a try tomorrow.
Any ideas or suggestions? If I can't get this fixed I'll go with an open source solution so that I can at least look at the source and figure out what might cause the error (s the source to mamewah available?)


For details I'm running win98se pretty much up to date with MS patches (including DirectX 9) on an P-II 300 and I'm using the DOs pentium or better version of MAME 0.74

I downloaded mamewah 0.954b and installed it in c:\mamewah. I then unzipped the layout.zip to create a c:\mamewah\layout directory.
I then downloaded mamewah 0.96 and unzipped it into c:\mamewah, ovewriting files as needed.

I then modified my emu1.cfg according to the instructions from the web page to point it to C:\MAME and C:\MAME\ROMS, changed the DOS box option to 2, etc...

Please help!

[Minwah]

I am not sure what this problem is

Sounds like you did everything right, but I'd recommend using MW's menu to set stuff up to reduce the risk of mucking up the .cfg format.

[papaschtroumpf]

It doesn't appear in the task list on Win98 but I'll downloada process viewer of some kind because after it gives me the error and exit I don't see it in the task manager either, but I know something must be running, because for example I can't delete the exe, Win98 tells me it's "in use".
The reason I think that it's not another instance running is because even after a clean boot I get the errors I mentionned.
I will take a look at my config file before and after to see if I can confirm that it's getting corrupted.

[papaschtroumpf]

I did a bit of experimentation before leaving for work and removed the entire file directory, ran mamewah and exited immediately, stuffed the values by hand in the config file again and it ran fine, so this is definitely related to the files directory, you don't have to do a full re-install after all,just wipe the files directory.
When I ran it the 2nd time it gave me an error 70 "access denied" and quit. By the way the error occurs after I select a game to launch, while it's loading the game, I don't know if it helps in anyway (would mame and mamewah try to access a file at the same time?)

I started over methodically documenting what I was doing, saving the files directory after each run, but as luck would have it, it ran just fine the 2nd and 3rd time. I'm guessing it's just a matter of time until it crashes again, and when (if) it does I should have a full copy of the files directory to compare it to.

I'll keep you posted

[Minwah]

Does refreshing the games list affect what happens?  ie does the problem happen if you do not refresh the list at any point?

[papaschtroumpf]

I don't believe so, the problem happens without me touching the contents of the MAME directory, and when I start getting the run-time errors I can't refresh the game list without getting the error also.

[papaschtroumpf]

OK, after further experimentation it seems that when I crash the first time there is a new file called VERIFY in my mamewah directory, and mamewah won't start again (run time error 70, access denied) until I delte that file.

MinWah I emailed you the details

Does this help?

I suppose I could run a batch file before mamewah to delte the file if it exists but that seems kludgy and we still don't know wht caused it to crash in the first place.

[Minwah]

OK, after further experimentation it seems that when I crash the first time there is a new file called VERIFY in my mamewah directory, and mamewah won't start again (run time error 70, access denied) until I delte that file.

MinWah I emailed you the details

Does this help?

See here:

http://www.arcadecontrols.org/yabbse/index.php?board=3;action=display;threadid=12168