Attract Mode sometimes is frozen when I exit a game, until I mouseclick

[bkendig]

I have Attract Mode set up on a Windows 10 PC in a vertical arcade cabinet to run MAME. I'm using Attract Mode's animated Pac-Man menu interface.

It can launch games just fine, but sometimes when I exit a game and return to Attract Mode, AM is stuck - it's not animating, and the joystick/buttons have no effect.

If I click the mouse, it comes back to life. Problem is, I'm not going to always leave a mouse connected to my arcade cabinet.

How can I prevent this from happening?

[raygun]

What program are you running when this happens?  Can you post the emulator settings that you are using (the emulator.cfg file)?

[bkendig]

Nothing's installed on this PC except Windows 10, mame64, and attract. I'm attaching a copy of mame.cfg.

The problem is very difficult to reproduce - I can go into a game and exit back to AM repeatedly without AM getting stuck, but then later it will randomly happen. I'm wondering whether some Windows background task is interfering, running some other task that gets focus instead of AM after Mame quits. I should look for a guide to which Windows 10 services I can stop on a dedicated gaming PC like this.

[jimmer]

I get the same/siilar problem with AM 2.1.0 and 2.2.1 but 1.5.3 is good. I'm now testing 1.6.2.

This is 32bit windows XP.

Sometimes AM is stuck when I leave a game, but also AM stops responding after a period of just sitting there.

I use a very simple screen layout, and have tried various screensaver options.  The problem still occurs with screensaver time 0 (off). With the screensaver on sometimes the screen saver stops moving but pressing a button brings AM back to life, other times it won't come back. Sometimes pressing buttons repeatedly bings it back to life after some random number of presses from 2 to 20 or more.

[progets]

I get the same/siilar problem with AM 2.1.0 and 2.2.1 but 1.5.3 is good. I'm now testing 1.6.2.

This is 32bit windows XP.

Sometimes AM is stuck when I leave a game, but also AM stops responding after a period of just sitting there.

I use a very simple screen layout, and have tried various screensaver options.  The problem still occurs with screensaver time 0 (off). With the screensaver on sometimes the screen saver stops moving but pressing a button brings AM back to life, other times it won't come back. Sometimes pressing buttons repeatedly bings it back to life after some random number of presses from 2 to 20 or more.

If you open a command prompt and run Attract-Mode you will likely see errors when it crashes. These will help point you to the solution.

[jimmer]

I tried running it from a command window. Nothing to see!

It just stops responding to keyboard input. No message in the command window.  Also there is no cpu usage shown in task manager.

No problem seen with v1.6.2 yet.  It seems to behave the same as 1.5.3   ie the screensaver will stop changing images but keyboard input will bring the gameslist back up.

My solution is to use 1.6.2 or 1.5.3.  But at some point there might be a feature I need in a newer version.

[bkendig]

I'm continuing to see the problem with Attract Mode being frozen when I exit from Mame. It's rare, and I can never reproduce it when I try, but occasionally it still happens.

When it is frozen like this, Alt-Tab also unfreezes it. (And the only two items on the Alt-Tab menu are Attract Mode and the cmd window it has open behind it.)

I'm not on 2.2.1 yet; I'll upgrade to that.

[spedinfargo]

I think you're kind of on the right track with the focus problem, which explains why Alt-Tab or mousing clicking on the Attract Mode screen works.  Something appears to sometimes grab focus from Attract Mode - I also wonder if it might be something more common to Windows 10.

Since I don't have a full-sized keyboard, this is crappy when it happens for the kids (hard to explain how to alt-tab on the tiny keyboard or use the tiny touch pad to navigate the mouse and then click).  I have an Auto-Hot-Key script that I call the Nuclear Option that I've taught them to use.  This calls a batch file that kills all Mame and Attract Mode processes and restarts Attract Mode.  I have this mapped to a button combination on the control panel that they know how to use.  It's a little overkill but it works really well.

I'll post that to another thread...