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« on: February 20, 2018, 06:05:50 AM »
Another possible solution... this works on Win 10 and I imagine Win 7 as well.
I have one AHK script that launches everything I need to have running at startup: it starts up my control panel (I-PAC 4) with the appropriate profile, it sets 320x240 resolution for CRT and defines hotkeys to switch resolutions (mostly for troubleshooting), and it launches Attract Mode itself. (I run the non-console version 2.3.)
The script is compiled as an EXE, and I put it in the registry instead of explorer.exe. So on start-up this script runs instead of Windows explorer, and in turn it launches Attract Mode.
It works pretty well. You see the Win 10 load screen briefly, then it just jumps straight into my intro.nut. Also, it seems like it helps with issues of quitting games and returning to Attract Mode with the front end in proper focus.
I use a lot of Autohotkey scripts on my cabinet to manage resolution changes for non-MAME games and various other tasks. I also use it to assign functions to certain buttons, like if you hold pause for 3 seconds I have AHK treat it as a quit game input (so I only need one physical button for pause and quit). It is also handy for dealing with configuration popups for games like Slain, where it asks you to choose your preferred resolution every time you start the game up. AHK can hide those and make the appropriate selection without the user ever seeing them. Anyhow, I highly recommend it, especially if you are mixing MAME and non-MAME content.