Can't run MAME 0.178. Freezing on "Initializing" screen

After a long time with no MAME using, I got 0.178 and all the ROMS and CHDs and very happy for MAMEWUI have been merged with the project.

Anyway, with all settings ready, when I start the executable I get only a black screen showing "Initializing" and games don't load... I was considering the size of the pack and waited for HOURS (when I went to bed I left it running hoping by the morning it'd be at that list on the screen at least), but nothing happened... the "initializing" was still there and I couldn't close the window at all, even through Task Manager, so I have to reboot my system... Did that several times and the problem persists...

I'm running it from a external drive but was sure that all the paths were OK, I rechecked them and they look fine to me. Doing some research I thought it was something related to DirectX but my version is up to date. I'm using Win10 x64 and MAME64.

Any ideas?

mame

Best Answer

I did it! Thanks to Anime-niac, a user from MAMEWorld Forums, I could run MAME finally.

The problem was that I didn't have DirectX 9.0 installed. I thought the version 12.0 already installed in my PC was enough to make it run, but fortunately I was wrong. However, I got only the web installer version to be properly installed. The other one, a runtime EXE, displayed it wasn't compatible with Win10...

Anyway, everything is OK now.