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mjrgh / PinballY

A table browser and launcher ("front end") for virtual pinball cabinets.
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Losing Settings.txt #193

Open multigametechniek opened 3 years ago

multigametechniek commented 3 years ago

Sometimes (like once a month) after I startup my cab, all settings are lost and PinballY starts like the first time after it was installed. I know it is easy to activate the last made backup from the settings.txt, but why does this happen and am I the only one? And most of all; what can I do to keep this from happening.

DjFIL007 commented 3 years ago

I had this issue about a month or two ago too. I haven't taken time to re-configure my tables yet and considered moving to a different front end, cause I was also getting BSOD crashes which I've related to Pinball Y (as once I disable it from auto launching my PC and tables all work fine). Would appreciate any insight too, as I was very happy with Pinball Y until this.

mjrgh commented 3 years ago

Sometimes (like once a month) after I startup my cab

I'm afraid I don't have any ideas off-hand. If Settings.txt is getting erased on you, it could be due to a bug in PinballY that I don't know about, or it could be something external, like a file system corruption or lost disk cache data. My guess would be that you're losing the file at shutdown rather than at startup - that is, the file is getting erased or corrupted or otherwise lost just before the system shuts down, and then the next time you start it up, the file is missing so you see the default settings. So I'd try to figure out if you can observe any pattern to something unusual happening at shutdown time each time this happens. If you can find a pattern, maybe that'll point to something that can be fixed (either in PinballY or somewhere else in the system).

I was also getting BSOD crashes which I've related to Pinball Y

Note that blue screens are actually caused by device drivers, not application program programs, so the crash you've been experiencing is coming from a device driver bug. Probably one your video device drivers (either the main video card device driver or a DirectX driver for your card). You might try making sure you're on the latest versions of all of those; hopefully the video card manufacturer will have fixed whatever it is.

RunningMan-01 commented 1 year ago

I am half bummed, half relieved, to see that this is a known issue. Exact same problem for me, although it's now consistently happening every time I turn off my cab. I've tested the heck out of this thing. As long as I don't turn off my PC, I can start/stop PBY as many times as I want and no problems. As soon as I restart, Settings.txt is basically back to a first-run version. Copy/paste a backup Settings.txt file and everything is back to normal.

I'll see if I can do more testing to determine if it's startup or shutdown that's causing the file to be wiped. I have a feeling it's something to do with the automatic startup.

KHouse75 commented 10 months ago

I have something similar to this happening. I don't think all settings are reverting but, sometimes, after a reboot, the positions of the dmd, backglass and playfield get reset and everything is on the main playfield screen. I don't think this is a PinballY issue. I think it's a windows issue where on startup, when the OS detects the displays it creates an entirely new configuration at the OS level which seems to cause PinballY to reset the display locations.

I used to use a tool to export the display settings to a file, and, on startup, it would import the display settings and everything would usually work as expected, most of the time. I then discovered that it had something to do with having a VGA monitor for the DMD so I replace it with an HDMI monitor and the problem stopped.

One thing I noticed was if I accidentally started the pinball pc without one of the monitors on, it would screw up the settings so I'm very careful to always turn on all monitors before starting the PC.

Sometimes, if the power flickers, one of the monitors will turn off but the pc and other monitors will stay on which will cause the configuration to get screwed up and I have to reboot with all monitors on then copy the settings.txt backup file.

These issues also cause me to have to reset the monitor settings in b2s backglass which is a pain because the original settings no longer work. I have to guess as to which monitor is which until I get it right.