Please MAME, stop locking up

[Brad Lee]

I'm having frequent lockups when in Mame, or the frontend, but not in windows itself

I've tried advancemame, mame, mame for dos, mame for pentium, mame for windows, mame32, and fastmame-   all in versions .62, .63 and most in .64
I've used mostly advmenu, but sometime mame32 as the FE
I've been using either win98se or winXP

When actually playing, it runs fine most of the time, but if I leave a game on the screen and go have a smoke for example it'll be locked up when I get back, or if I leave it on over night it's 99% of the time locked up. It locks up less frequently when just sitting in the FE, but it still does

I can close everything and run some other program or jsut leave it in windows or the screensaver and it is stable as heck. Temperature isn't too high- between 38-42'C, memory is good, cards are good.

It's just frustrating as hell.. sigh
Fortunately with taxes coming back I will be buying a new system to use in my cabinet and hopefully that'll clear things up

[Mike]

I had the same problem. Your computer is probably overheating. When your running mame your hammering the cpu and producing a lot of heat. unlike when your running windows and it's sitting idle most of the time. I added to case fans and cut a hole in the back of my cabinet and covered it in screen and all is ok now.

[Brad Lee]

Yea I've grabbed a few fans from work that I'll be putting in.. Heat was my initial thought but I didn't give it too much thought cuz it's not completely sealed, and the temp readings

[Jakobud]

Just open up the back of your cabinet (or however you get into it) and just aim a big room fan into it.  If you don't have any more lockups then you know it's heat.  

[Brad Lee]

I did this. Opened the coin door and pointed a fan directly at the board. Within 5 minutes the temp reading was down to 33'C, and I let it run the Burger Time attract mode. 8 hours later it was still running