Need help with understanding mame and problem

[Zachmeadows51]

Well, first off, I am no tech master at all. I recently started to build a mame arcade with my father. Well he died on the 21 of march, so I lost the man who knew everything. Before he died, he had mame 32 on his computer. I transferred it all on to mine, which runs on windows xp. Well when I click on a game to play. It uploads a loading sign and then exists it out in a few seconds. I know little to nothing about mame or roms, so I was wondering if someone could help me and explain how to fix it to a non tech master. Any help is needed, my dad was the one I went to for this stuff and could fix it in a second, we started this project together and I really want to finish this in his memory.

[Zachmeadows51]

Any help with understanding mame would be great.

[sandheaver]

Sorry for your loss.  That sucks.  My dad died 12 years ago and I'm still not over it.  I'll never be over it.

Telling someone how to run MAME is a tall order; It's easy, but difficult to explain like most things that run on a computer.

However, the world is full of folks that run MAME and can help you.  Here's a web page that explains how to get started better than I could.  http://strategywiki.org/wiki/MAME/Install

Finishing this will make you feel closer to your dad, but it'll be tough for you.  Take your time and don't rush it.  You'll get there.

[Zachmeadows51]

How do you direct mame to the correct file to access your rooms from that folder?

[DaOld Man]

How do you direct mame to the correct file to access your rooms from that folder?

Open up mame.ini (should be in same folder as mame.exe).
Open it with notepad or word.
Make sure the paths are correct.

Here is an example in my mame.ini file (It may be called .cfg)

### Windows path and directory options ###
rompath                 C:\Arcade\Mame\Roms
samplepath              C:\Arcade\Mame\samples
inipath                 C:\Arcade\Mame
cfg_directory           C:\Arcade\Mame\cfg
nvram_directory         C:\Arcade\Mame\nvram
memcard_directory       C:\Arcade\Mame\memcard
input_directory         C:\Arcade\Mame\inp
hiscore_directory       C:\Arcade\Mame\hi
state_directory         C:\Arcade\Mame\sta
artwork_directory       C:\Arcade\Mame\artwork
snapshot_directory      C:\Arcade\Mame\snap
diff_directory          C:\Arcade\Mame\diff
ctrlr_directory         C:\Arcade\Mame\ctrlr
cheat_file              C:\Arcade\Mame\cheat.dat

Make sure that the paths are correct on your computer. If you just copied everything from your dads computer, chances are good that the paths are not the same on your computer.

[Zachmeadows51]

It was indeed the path. I went to options>directories>program files>mame32>roms, then clicked ok and then clicked ok and then let it scanned, then it worked