Windows version will not start

[ThePagel]

The windows version you have up on drop box will install but after installation will not run, gives no errors or anything else that would help in figuring it out. I am having this problem on Windows 10. The old version hosted on the emulation station website starts fine.

[duiz]

Yeah this has happened to me as well now. Suddenly can't run it.

[zigurana]

Same here for the precompiled version from dropbox.
Win10 home edition.
FWIW: running the installer creates the username.emulationstation dir, but it only contains theme data, no logging.

[wolf-sigma]

@duiz and @zigurana - just for clarity, previously installed versions of it stopped working or just when you try to install it anew?

[zigurana]

I didn't try it earlier, tried my first installation today using the
precompiled version in the dropbox folder. I ran the
install-emulatiostation.exe.

[zigurana]

Hi, just wondering if you managed to reproduce the issue? Is there more
info you need to troubleshoot this?

[Enverex]

Doesn't start on Linux either, just gives....

ConfigPath /home/arcade/.config/emulationstation
Couldn't load settings from "/home/arcade/.config/emulationstation"

Doesn't matter if the settings folder exists or not, it just gives that error and doesn't even start the GUI. Not sure if it's the same reason, but the result is the same.

One of you Windows guys should try running it from cmd to see if it echos out the same sort of error, that way we can confirm if it's the same issue or not.

[wolf-sigma]

Hey guys -

I've been able to duplicate this on a fresh install of Windows (2012 R2). I'll look into and see what's up. Oddly I'm not getting the error @Enverex is in Linux, but I'm able to duplicate it at least :)

[Hancharenko]

So I found two scenarios in which EmulationStation fails to load on Windows.

1. If a C:\Users\username.emulationstation folder AND a C:\Users\username\Documents\EmulationStation folder exist, the app defaults to .emulationstation as the primary config directory. Users who have upgraded and moved their configs to the Documents folder should check to see if a .emulationstation folder still exists and delete it. This fixed my issue.
2. Newer builds of emulationstation.exe appear to not auto-generate default configs. The EmulationStation folder is created in the Documents directory, but none of the configs, gamelists, themes, etc are created. This can be side-stepped by placing a set of configs in the EmulationStation folder. I'll provide mine in the case that it helps someone. You'll just have to edit the es_systems and es_settings to fit your settings, emulator and ROM paths.
   EmulationStation.zip

[wolf-sigma]

Hey everyone thanks to @Hancharenko - I've isolated this down to the right line of code:

https://github.com/Herdinger/EmulationStation/blob/master/es-app/src/main.cpp#L237

Basically when it's a new config, that function will return false and fail. I can easily fix that, but @Herdinger - did you have a specific reason for making that function a bool instead of a void when if it doesn't exist it gets created later?

[wolf-sigma]

I committed a patch that seems to fix this. Can ya'll check and see?

@Herdinger - I basically skipped passed the check on https://github.com/Herdinger/EmulationStation/blob/master/es-app/src/main.cpp#L237 and made it an informational message instead. If you had a different purpose for that, let me know, and we can fix something.

[Hancharenko]

@t3hi3x - The changes you made appear to work. The app properly launches and you receive the notification that there are no config files, so a default systems.cfg is generated. This should help with clean installations a bit. Thanks!

lvl2:   EmulationStation - v2.0.1a, built Jul 13 2016 - 20:02:25
lvl2:   Creating surface...
lvl2:   Created window successfully.
lvl2:   Added unconfigured joystick XInput Controller #1 (GUID: 00000000000000000000000000000000, instance ID: 0, device index: 0).
lvl2:   Checking available OpenGL extensions...
lvl2:    ARB_texture_non_power_of_two: ok
lvl2:   Loading system config file /etc/emulationstation/es_systems.cfg...
lvl0:   es_systems.cfg file does not exist!
lvl0:   Example config written!  Go read it at "C:/Users/mickey/Documents/EmulationStation/es_systems.cfg"!
lvl0:   Error while parsing systems configuration file!
lvl2:   EmulationStation cleanly shutting down.