Startup of PC with Keywiz & Mamewah - no sound in Mamewah initially - fixed

[whatisk]

Currently my MAME PC runs a batch file which programs the Keywiz Max with a custom codeset and then runs Mamewah.

I have set the taskbar to autohide and in the startup group I have a shortcut to the batch file set to run minimised. This is all good, as when it boots the background picture is showing (it has a message on there saying to 'please wait') and you can't see the startbar or dos box.

What does happen though, is that when Mamewah loads up through the link to the batch file, I get no sounds from it until I run a game and exit back to it. After that, all sounds work fine.

With a little experiementing, I have found that if I run the batch file directly, rather than via a shortcut, the sound works fine when it first goes into Mamewah. However, the obvious problem with this is that the dos box is then not minimised to the taskbar (and effectively hidden).

I would much prefer have the keywiz program itself prior to going into the FE, as if the FE runs prior to the programming being complete, it appears to get some key commands which runs a game and then the programming doesn't seem to complete itself until you exit the game (which can be difficult without the encoder being fully programmed).

I have tried moving the batch file to the Mamewah folder and setting the working path in the link to the Mamewah folder. I have also tried various combinations of having the keywiz program in the Run setting in the registry and running the link file and batch file in the Run setting in the registry (in separate tests obviously

[whatisk]

Okay, after more searching around the net and experimentation, I have found a solution.

What I needed to do was change the layout properties for the cmd.exe window.

I set the window size height and width in the layout tab to 1.
I also set the window position left to the lowest figure I could and the top figure to the highest.

When done, I set it to be those settings for all windows with that title. Now when I place the batch file in the startup group, it runs as a small white line at the bottom left of the screen and when Mamewah comes up, I get the sound straight up.

Only side effect with doing it this way is that any window with the title cmd.exe that opens will appear as the small line at the bottom of the screen. Of course, in a dedicated MAME cab, this is not an issue as I won't be running command prompts on it except for running batch files for different functions.