Help: Mame somtimes rotates games, other games play fine

[twistedsymphony]

So I'm building a mame cab and I'm 99% complete with the software setup I just have a weird problem with MAME... technically have 2 weird problems but I'll get to that in a minute.

I'm running a Intel Core 2 4300 @1.8GHz with 2GB Ram and an old nVidia 7200 graphics card.
Windows XP SP3 with all updates.

This is a dedicated Vertical Monitor setup and all of the roms available to mame are vertical games.
I'm using a Hyperspin front end and the front end is setup the way I like it and works great. it launches mame jsut how it should (just vanilla mame, no HyperLaunch).

however about half the games launch properly and the other half launch rotated as if they were horizontal games.

for instance Qbert launches properly, however BurgerTime launches like it's a horizontal game. none of these games have any special configs, it's a plain old MAME install with nothing special going on.

Now part of the problem is that this PC doesn't like to display MAME menus for whatever reason... if I double click the mame.exe without specifying a rom or push TAB while in a game I'll get a split-second of a BSOD and the PC will reboot.

I've already tried fresh versions of MAME, old versions of MAME wiped the hard drive and reinstalled windows... no matter what I do this is the result I get in MAME.

I moved the MAME installation to a thumb drive and ran it on another PC and it works fine... it' just THIS PC that doesn't like it for whatever reason. No other programs seem to cause this... just MAME.

this is fine because there's no issue entering and exiting games from the front end, but is a huge hinderance in troubleshooting the rotation issue... maybe they're related. maybe not.

Any help toward solving either issue would be greatly appreciated.

[Benzinbruder]

Have you tried any other emulators? Are you able to play anything else without problems?
It might be some faulty component in your PC? - are all your devices installed correctly?
Are you using onboard graphics? If not, try removing your dedicated video card and run MAME with onboard graphics (if available).
Is your RAM installed properly and working fine?
Have you tried running MAME off a HDD and a USB-Stick?

I'd want to sort out the reboot-problem when entering a MAME menu first. If everything's fine so far, it's time to tackle the rotation error!

[twistedsymphony]

Have you tried any other emulators? Are you able to play anything else without problems?

I haven't tried any other emulators but I am running Fix it Felix Jr without any problems
I can also run HyperspinHQ and LEDBlinky without any issue as well as any of the built in windows components that are available.

It might be some faulty component in your PC? - are all your devices installed correctly?

There is not much to this PC, it's a motherboard, some ram, a graphics card and a hard drive, thats it!

Are you using onboard graphics? If not, try removing your dedicated video card and run MAME with onboard graphics (if available).

The on-board graphics are currently disabled but I have tried running from that instead of the card, mame still crashes. I've also double checked and re-installed the nVidia graphics driver, same result.

Is your RAM installed properly and working fine?

I've run a full memory test twice and it came back clean both times

Have you tried running MAME off a HDD and a USB-Stick?

yes, I've swapped hard drives and run MAME from a USB stick... no difference

[Malenko]

whats the crash event from the system log?

[JDFan]

I moved the MAME installation to a thumb drive and ran it on another PC and it works fine... it' just THIS PC that doesn't like it for whatever reason. No other programs seem to cause this... just MAME.

Since you mention running it from another system -- do the games mentioned launch rotated on the other system as well ?? -- It does sound like one of the config files needs adjusting perhaps launch it on the other system - make adjustments using the tab menu on that system and then take it to this system and recopy the files back after adjusting and see if the games then launch properly.

Also reinstall the DirectX runtime files ( http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=34429 ) as it sometimes helps clear up these type of problems.

[twistedsymphony]

whats the crash event from the system log?

you know it never occurred to me to check the event viewer 

I moved the MAME installation to a thumb drive and ran it on another PC and it works fine... it' just THIS PC that doesn't like it for whatever reason. No other programs seem to cause this... just MAME.

Since you mention running it from another system -- do the games mentioned launch rotated on the other system as well ?? -- It does sound like one of the config files needs adjusting perhaps launch it on the other system - make adjustments using the tab menu on that system and then take it to this system and recopy the files back after adjusting and see if the games then launch properly.

Also reinstall the DirectX runtime files ( http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=34429 ) as it sometimes helps clear up these type of problems.

they don't launch rotated on the other PC and I've tried modifying the rotation there but it doesn't have an effect when I move that config over to the problem PC.

I'll try reinstalling Direct X tonight, thanks.

[dkersten]

Also go into your mame.ini and try setting video to ddraw and see if it fixes it. 
If you try an older version, run the mame -cc to get a new ini file for that version, just moving the mame.exe into place with existing ini file can cause issues if the problem is in the configuration.
My best guess is it is a d3d problem and video is set to auto in the config.  But also being as you are getting a blue screen, I wouldn't be surprised to find a hardware or driver issue with regards to video.  When you tried using on board graphics, did you physically remove the card or just switch your video cord to the onboard port?
Get the directx9.0c runtime as a download and install that even if you already have directx running via other means. 

As for the rotate, once you go into a game on your machine and tab into the menu and go to video and rotate it there, it should save it that way regardless of what you set up in mame.ini.

[twistedsymphony]

Also go into your mame.ini and try setting video to ddraw and see if it fixes it. 
If you try an older version, run the mame -cc to get a new ini file for that version, just moving the mame.exe into place with existing ini file can cause issues if the problem is in the configuration.
My best guess is it is a d3d problem and video is set to auto in the config.  But also being as you are getting a blue screen, I wouldn't be surprised to find a hardware or driver issue with regards to video.  When you tried using on board graphics, did you physically remove the card or just switch your video cord to the onboard port?
Get the directx9.0c runtime as a download and install that even if you already have directx running via other means. 

As for the rotate, once you go into a game on your machine and tab into the menu and go to video and rotate it there, it should save it that way regardless of what you set up in mame.ini.

I'll try your suggestions with the ini tonight.

When I switched to on-board video I did indeed physically remove the card. I actually even swapped to another identical card since I had bought two of them for two different builds. the other machine is pretty much identical except for the motherboard and processor. I don't have any issues with that machine, but I also don't run MAME on that machine.

[twistedsymphony]

I've got both problems fixed now! 

first I checked the system log and there was nothing worthwhile in there. I intentionally ran mame to make the system crash, rechecked the log and still nothing on either the application or the system log. just a bunch of notifications for windows services initializing during boot no errors or even warnings.

I decided to recheck the bios setting to see if there was anything I might have missed in there. I started playing around with stuff disabling more things that I decided I didn't need and then though "maybe I should just reset the defaults and start fresh" ... so I did.

 I had bought this MOBO used and didn't touch the bios except to change the boot order and disable internal graphics, but thinking about it I realized it could have had some wacky settings from the previous owner. After resetting the defaults I tweaked the boot order and disabled the floppy and CD drives (since I don't have any) and left everything else as default... including the graphics card settings which are (by default) set to auto detect a secondary device and disable the internal graphics if one is found...

after rebooting MAME no longer crashed... YAY! not sure what it was that was causing it to crash but I'm not touching the bios again since it's working now.

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I started to play around with getting mame to display games properly and even weirder stuff was happening... some games were playing squished horizontally now and other games that worked fine before were now rotated wrong, burgertime was now playing upside down....

I started to make some weird changes to individual game setting to make it display right when I decided I should take a similar approach to what I did in the bios. I renamed my mame.ini file and generated a fresh one. went in and changed d3d to ddraw and turned on vsync (the one option I actually care about) and wouldn't you know it... all the game started to play as they should!

I actually had to undo the "fixes" I made to 2 games since those were the only ones playing wrong now 

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One more problem popped up and somehow my controls.ini file got reset I'm not sure how this happened since I downloaded it and didn't think that mame even looked at it. I need this file because I'm running a servo stick and LEDBlinky needs it to determine the right setting for each game. so I had to add back in the dummy profile for fix it felix and set Qbert and a couple of other diagonal games to 8-way so I can use the diagonals.

Now the software side of my build is done and I can wrap up the hardware side (which is really just wiring in the Monitor and sound at this point). I'll post a build thread once I'm done.

Thanks for the help everyone 

[Howard_Casto]

Probably not the cause, but just for future reference.  A lot of times people will mention oddball behavior in mame and they are running the hyperspin FE.  The culprit ends up being HS and/or one of the many add-ons/utilities for the FE monkeying with their mame settings and screwing it up. 

Again probably not the cause this time BUT.... just to narrow things down when you are building a cab on the software end of things first install mame and make sure it runs properly via the command line.  THEN install your front-end of choice.  If mame magically breaks, it's probably the front-end. 

[twistedsymphony]

yeah I've had my share of "experience" with Hyperspin... mostly the problems are related to "HyperLaunch" as hyperspin itself is fairly innocuous, HyperLaunch is the app that actually modifies your config files "for you"  or swaps them out at run time behind the scenes and other crap... I have a machine for another project that uses hyperspin and hyperlaunch to manage a dozen different emulation platforms so I'm pretty well versed in it at this point.

Oddly enough in this particular case running MAME from hyperspin worked fine, it was only when I ran it WITHOUT hyperspin that it caused the computer to crash 

[Benzinbruder]

Glad you got it worked out! 

I wouldn't have thought that a BIOS setting would be the cause for all this - even more since you even already had performed a fresh and fully working install of windows.
Resetting everything is probably generally a good idea when working with used components...