Questions about VirtuaNES--please help

[arcadecab]

I downloaded the most recent version of VirtuaNES as it was suggested as one of the best NES emulators out there for an arcade cab.  I just have a few questions though after working awhile with it--I have received the following message when loading several games--"Being that the NES header is illegal, ... reason for not working, Activate anyway".  The roms I am using are .nes extensions, but not sure why I get this message sometimes and not all the time.  Enough though to be a real annoyance.  Any suggestions?
--Also, how can I have the emulator open to a full screen all the time?  It currently opens small and I have to manually open to full screen each time.
--Also, I have had trouble get the second controller working as it doesnt seem to recognize it when setting the controller options.  Any secret to getting the second controller to be recognized?
--Then, how do I establish the esc button to be my exit so that I dont have to use the menus to exit the game and go back to the front end?

Thanks for the help.  VirtuaNES seems good.  I also downloaded Nester.  Is VirtuaNES definitely the best out there for NES?  I heard that VirtuaNES doesnt play some games?

[grounded]

I'm having identical problems with about 20% of my games, and about 10% won't run at all.

There is a menu option to configure all the keys, just look for it. There is also a menu option for full screen, did you look in the "Graphics" section at the resolution selection?

[Jakobud]

There is a menu option to run the games at fullscreen.  I dont know what the deal is with the rom header errors you are getting.  Will the game still run with those errors showing up?  If so, maybe there is some way in VirtualNes to tell it to ignore or hide errors.  If not, it sounds to me like those are bad rom dumps you are using.  And I'm pretty sure that you can't bind ESC to be used when wanting to exit VirtualNES.  Because when you goto the hotkey/shortcut menu to set keys, pressing ESC to bind an action to that key just results in your exiting that dialog box  Maybe set it to a different key and have your encoder switch a few inputs around right before running VirtualNES and then switch back to normal Mame config right after exiting VirtualNES.

[visciouslymamed]

I can't remember who came up with this, but it works great.

To use the ESC key to exit:

Ok, run VirtuaNES, set up your controller the way you like,  and then go the Options menu, then pick Shortcut Keys. Clear all of these out (double-click the current key assignment and then hit ESC). Now exit the program and open up VirtuaNES.ini. You should see a [ShortCut] section. Make the first line look like this:

[ShortCut]
TBL00=000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000010001

Everything else in the [Shortcut] section should equal zero. Save the file, then MAKE SURE TO MAKE VIRTUANES.INI READ-ONLY! VirtuaNES will write over the file if you don't. Then you should be set! Hopefully

[arcadecab]

visciouslymamed,

Thanks for the great tip.  Just wondering, do you also have trouble loading a certain percentage of games with virtuaNES?  As reported by a couple of people, 10-20% of the games dont seem to load with VirtuaNES.  I have tried other emulators with the same roms and they seem to work, so I think the roms are ok.  Is it common knowledge that virtuaNES is not compatible with all NES roms?  Otherwise, virtuaNES seems like a good choice for an NES emulator, especially with the tip on esc exit ability.
Thanks.