Mame v0.129 minimizes to desktop every 30 minutes exactly

General discussion on MAME, MARP, or whatever else that doesn't belong in any of the other forums

Moderators: mahlemiut, seymour, QRS

Post Reply
User avatar
flop
Button Masher
Button Masher
Posts: 28
Joined: Wed Jun 16, 2004 7:14 am
Location: Dungarvan, Ireland

Mame v0.129 minimizes to desktop every 30 minutes exactly

Post by flop »

Hi all,

I've had this problem for a while and only getting around to doing something about it.

I've noticed that when playing mame v0.129, the game window minimizes to the desktop every 30 minutes exactly.

I've tired a a couple of older version of mame (i.e. 0.53 and 0.64) plus a few newer version of mame (0.149 and 0.189) and i can't reproduce the problem.

I'm using this specific version of mame as i compiled it myself to allow for hiscore saving using the hiscore.dat file. The problem only seemed to manifest itself in the last year or so.

I'm using Windows 7 BTW.

There are a number of threads acroiss the wen that led me to believe that this was a general issue, googling "Games minimize to desktop" returns a lot of hits.

I've tried some of the solutions suggested (to no avail). I've also checked the event log view to see if there is some scheduled task that is running every 30 minutes I've disabled a couple of potential culprits to no avail.

I also used the windows focus logger to see if it the program could detect what app is stealing focus. The log does register any application stealing focus on the 30 min or 60 min mark.
http://www.adminscope.com/downloads/win ... us-logger/

I'm thinking it may be easier to recompile mame v0.189 with hi score.dat enabled (i'm a Software Developer for the [ast 25 years) , however i would like to understand why this behaviour is happening in the first place

Any ideas?

Cheers
Flop
User avatar
mahlemiut
Editor
Posts: 4183
Joined: Mon Feb 04, 2002 10:05 pm
Location: New Zealand
Contact:

Re: Mame v0.129 minimizes to desktop every 30 minutes exactl

Post by mahlemiut »

Possibly virus scanner or similar. Presumably this doesn't happen when running windowed (or at least only momentarily loses focus)?

I'd say just download 0.189 - MAME has hiscore.dat support via a Lua plugin out of the box (hiscore.dat itself is included). 0.129 is waaay out of date.
- Barry Rodewald
MARP Assistant Web Maintainer
Image
BeeJay
MARPaltunnel Wrists
MARPaltunnel Wrists
Posts: 587
Joined: Fri Jun 17, 2005 1:40 am

Re: Mame v0.129 minimizes to desktop every 30 minutes exactl

Post by BeeJay »

I was having similar issues with things losing focus or minimising. Eventually I tracked it down to a scheduled task for "Office ClickToRun Service Monitor" under Windows Task Scheduler\Microsoft\Office in the task scheduler.

If you have Office installed on your machine you could see if that scheduled task is defined for your machine and set to say occur every 30 minutes - in my case it was set to every 60 minutes.

I disabled that scheduled task and the problem disappeared for me.

If you don't have that, I'd check using the task scheduler app to see if there is anything else scheduled to run every 30 minutes.

Cheers,
BeeJay.
User avatar
Cicca
MARP Knight
MARP Knight
Posts: 209
Joined: Tue Apr 09, 2002 11:56 am
Location: Italy
Contact:

Re: Mame v0.129 minimizes to desktop every 30 minutes exactl

Post by Cicca »

mahlemiut wrote:I'd say just download 0.189 - MAME has hiscore.dat support via a Lua plugin out of the box (hiscore.dat itself is included).
How this plugin (and the others included, such as Cheat or Timer) work...?! Is there any documentation around...?!
Thanks
User avatar
mahlemiut
Editor
Posts: 4183
Joined: Mon Feb 04, 2002 10:05 pm
Location: New Zealand
Contact:

Re: Mame v0.129 minimizes to desktop every 30 minutes exactl

Post by mahlemiut »

Plugins can be enabled or disabled in the Plugins menu from the built-in frontend. This can also be overridden by specifying plugins to enable or disable with -plugin or -noplugin switches (or the equivalent in mame.ini).
Any active plugin can then be configured in the Plugin Options menu in MAME's TAB menu (if it has any options).

The Data plugin is the only one enabled by default.

Protip: From 0.189, you can download http://replay.marpirc.net/txt/scores3.htm to your MAME folder, and the Data plugin will read it and display the Top 3 MARP scores for the game you're playing in the External DAT View menu option.
- Barry Rodewald
MARP Assistant Web Maintainer
Image
User avatar
flop
Button Masher
Button Masher
Posts: 28
Joined: Wed Jun 16, 2004 7:14 am
Location: Dungarvan, Ireland

Re: Mame v0.129 minimizes to desktop every 30 minutes exactl

Post by flop »

Hi Beejay, yes i had seen the suggestion in relation to MS Office tasks but not that specific one. I did disable the task, along with a couple of tasks related to by print and lo and behold, mame is not minimising every 30 mins!!!

Yes Barry, I did download mame v0.189 and enabled hiscore.dat via the plugin.json file. It works like a dream, although i need to refresh a number of roms that appear to have been updated in the intervening years. But there are worst things to be worried about.

Thanks for all your help guys. Now back to gaming!

Flop
Post Reply