The dreaded MAME black screen on exit

[mrteeney]

I have Attract Mode running MAME using the Game Station menu, and like many others I have the blank screen after exiting the MAME game and need to Ctrl-Tab back into Attract Mode.  I have the exact same setup on both my Windows 10 desktop (AMD FX, Radeon R9 380, 16GB RAM) and my arcade cabinet Windows 10 (Core 2 Duo, Integrated Graphics, 6 GB RAM).  I literally copied the MAME and Attract Mode folders from my desktop (paths are all the same), which doesn't have the problem, into my arcade setup.  I tried disabling focus, running the attract true black program, changing resolution etc. and it still happens.  I also changed the cancel buttons from MAME and Attract Mode to be different as I've read on another post (my desktop has both programs using escape as the cancel), and installed the newest version off Attract Mode, which sort of fixed the issue by only having to click a mouse button instead of alt-tabbing.  The only thing that seems to work is by displaying it in a window with the obnoxious title bar at top, borderless window setting results in the black screen.  I'm thinking this may be more of a video card issue, unfortunately the motherboard for my arcade machine only supports some old PCI-E graphics card which will not work in Windows 10.

[progets]

These posts might help you or at least give you some ideas on where to look.

http://forum.attractmode.org/index.php?topic=2582.msg17617#msg17617

http://forum.attractmode.org/index.php?topic=2547.msg17408#msg17408

http://forum.attractmode.org/index.php?topic=2547.msg17415#msg17415 (ignore the reference to RetroArch here, most of these apply to MAME too)

http://forum.attractmode.org/index.php?topic=2585.msg17633#msg17633

[Oomek]

If you are running AM on the latest build of Windows 10 make sure you have disabled Focus Assist in Windows settings.

[estefan3112]

Same problem here in MacOS. Need to force-quite AM every single time. Tried all the potential workarounds with no help (even the Windowed mode, which always worked in the past, no longer works). Older MAME versions make no difference, and also a version 2.4.1 that worked before no longer works. Is this OS-related?

Renders Attract Mode more or less unusable for me for the time being.

[mrteeney]

The strange thing is, every once in a while it will work on it's own (without changing anything).  I've tried all the above things along with the focus mode disabling, and maybe once out of every 100 game exits, it won't go to the black screen.  Like I said, my other desktop runs AM with no problems, the same version of MAME and the same AM config and settings.  I'm thinking this could be a video memory issue as my desktop has an 4GB Radeon card and my cabinet runs on the Intel integrated video (shared, maybe 512MB?).

[Oomek]

Does your theme use any swf files by any chance?

[jimmer]

2.0.0.cr2 is the ONLY version in the 2's that works properly on my arcade cabinet:  Win7 64bit SP1 aerotheme (necessary) Intel HD2000 integrated graphics.

Give it a go and report back. It could be a good clue for the developers.

[mrteeney]

I've done it, I've finally done it, damn them all to hell!!!

I've tried everything and finally found a fix for this, at least with my setup.  If you go into the actual MAME config (Config menu, emulators, mame) you'll see an option that says 'Non-blocking Wait Mode', I changed this to 1 (or 2 if your system is slow) and with the latest version of AM, you'll see a quick blank screen (if you're running Attract True Black, if not, it's your desktop) followed by the AM menu!!  Now if I could just figure out how to run Attract True Black to not trigger the Windows UAC...

[Oomek]

Prio, it's an app that adds new functions to the task manager, including permanent elevation.

[alucard]

Without disabling UAC, you can create an elevated Scheduled Task runnable on demand.
I launch elevated frontend with

Code: [Select]

schtasks.exe /Run /TN BartopFrontend
It's a common way to bypass UAC for a specific process.

Elevated attract-mode launches also elevated sub processes.

[incrediblehark]

2.0.0.cr2 is the ONLY version in the 2's that works properly on my arcade cabinet:  Win7 64bit SP1 aerotheme (necessary) Intel HD2000 integrated graphics.

Give it a go and report back. It could be a good clue for the developers.

^ This - solved all of my problems and 3 days of trying to get AM working with my mame build. Even reinstalled windows 1o because I thought I screwed up something. Thank you jimmer! Going to stick with this version indefinitely.

[estefan3112]

I've done it, I've finally done it, damn them all to hell!!!

I've tried everything and finally found a fix for this, at least with my setup.  If you go into the actual MAME config (Config menu, emulators, mame) you'll see an option that says 'Non-blocking Wait Mode', I changed this to 1 (or 2 if your system is slow) and with the latest version of AM, you'll see a quick blank screen (if you're running Attract True Black, if not, it's your desktop) followed by the AM menu!!  Now if I could just figure out how to run Attract True Black to not trigger the Windows UAC...

You are a hero - all problems resolved under MacOS as well! The value 1 in 'Non-blocking Wait Mode' just brought everything back to normal. Many thanks, AM works again!