8 replies to this topic

[topper2k]

Hi all,

 

I'm trying to troubleshoot the issue of PinUp videos and backglass continuing to play after I close a table in PinballY.

 

I've followed the steps recommended in the PinballY guide to close PinUpPlayer.exe and PinUpDisplay.exe when a VPX table closes. http://mjrnet.org/pi...temOptions.html

 

And they do close. The problem is, they don't appear to re-open the next time I launch a table that uses PinUp. The table will load, but there's no backglass or DMD.

 

This is only happening in PinballY. If I'm only using VPX, tables that use PinUP seem to open and close (and re-open) normally.

 

Also, in case it's related, I followed Nailbuster's troubleshooting guide to get PinUp working in Visual Pinball. One thing it mentions is setting pinupmenu.exe to run as admin. Where is that file? I can't find it anywhere in the pinupsystem folder. What am I overlooking?

 

 

[topper2k]

I'm not making any progress on this. Though I did figure out that pinupmenu.exe is only part of the Popper front end. So I'm not sure why that's included on the troubleshooting page just for PinUp Player.

 

I really like PinballY (and MJR's other programs like Pinscape and PinVol) and have so far found PinballY super easy to setup, manage, and use. And it seemed to not hog much of my system resources, which is important since I'm running on a pretty old PC.

 

It's been great for normal VPX tables, but there are a couple PinUp only tables I'd really like to be able to play and PinballY just isn't handling those well (on my system anyway). So I guess I'm going to bite the bullet and see if I can get Popper to run on my system. Wish me luck.

Edited by topper2k, 16 June 2020 - 09:17 PM.

[go ill 773]

I'm having the exact same problem with this... let me know if you come across a solution as I'll do the same.

 

Hi all,

 

I'm trying to troubleshoot the issue of PinUp videos and backglass continuing to play after I close a table in PinballY.

 

I've followed the steps recommended in the PinballY guide to close PinUpPlayer.exe and PinUpDisplay.exe when a VPX table closes. http://mjrnet.org/pi...temOptions.html

 

And they do close. The problem is, they don't appear to re-open the next time I launch a table that uses PinUp. The table will load, but there's no backglass or DMD.

 

This is only happening in PinballY. If I'm only using VPX, tables that use PinUP seem to open and close (and re-open) normally.

 

Also, in case it's related, I followed Nailbuster's troubleshooting guide to get PinUp working in Visual Pinball. One thing it mentions is setting pinupmenu.exe to run as admin. Where is that file? I can't find it anywhere in the pinupsystem folder. What am I overlooking?

 

 

[topper2k]

I may have worked this out thanks to some help from another user. In addition to following MJR's steps to add the commands in PinballY to close PinUpPlayer when VPX exits, I also needed to make sure my PinUp tables included the following:

 

Sub Table1_Exit():Controller.Stop:End Sub

 

It may be formatted slightly differently (like be on more than one line) but you need to make sure that Table1_Exit routine is in the script file for your PinUp tables.

 

It was there on one table I was running (Munsters) but not on the other (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire). Weirdly, both tables had a lot of problems until I added that line to HPGOF.

 

Things seem to be working now with PinUP tables and PinballY for me.

 

I don't know why HPGOF missing that line was affecting Munsters. Maybe it was just a coincidence. Maybe not properly exiting PinUpPlayer created problems when I tried to open another PinUp table. IDK.

 

I'm hesitant to say this is fixed. I've only got the two PinUp tables and I just got this working last night. So time will tell.

 

Also, I spent a big chunk of time the other day installing and setting up PinUp Popper. It was not nearly as easy as PinballY. It's a pretty slick front end. But it's overkill for what I need. I don't relish the prospect of adding a bunch of new games to it. For now I'm back to using PinballY even though Popper is installed and configured.

 

I'm installing the Mandalorian PinUp table (a mod of Cybernaut). I guess I'll know more once it's up and running in PinballY later today.

Edited by topper2k, 18 June 2020 - 06:44 PM.

[topper2k]

Well, the PUP version of The Mandalorian is running just fine in PinballY. And I don't seem to be having any more issues. So let's call this fixed.

It's weird that HPGOF runs just fine in Popper, but needs that one line of code added to not wreak havoc in PinballY.

So the takeaway here is follow MJR's instructions to add the commands for closing Pinup player to your PinballY options. And check your table scripts to make sure the developer has included the Table1_exit stuff mentioned above.

That seems to have solved it for me anyway.

[mjr]

It's weird that HPGOF runs just fine in Popper, but needs that one line of code added to not wreak havoc in PinballY.

 

Glad you found a solution.  For what it's worth, the basic problem here is that Pinup runs as a separate Windows process from VP, so it doesn't have any way to exit on its own - it needs VP to tell it when to shut down, which is what the Controller.Stop scripting code does.  Without that instruction from VP, Pinup will just run forever as an orphaned program.  That's probably why you couldn't get it to launch again after the first game exited - there was some zombie resource from the previous process still in the system that locked out a new copy from running.  Killing the process from a batch script on the PinballY side *usually* fixes this for most people, which is why that's in the PinballY instructions for setting up VP with Pinup, but it's better to use the Controller.Stop script on the VP side.  Windows as a rule doesn't like "kill process" operations because they can leave resources hanging around.  "Kill process" also doesn't give the program being killed a chance to save updates or otherwise do any cleanup it would normally do before exiting.  All of those things can combine to leave cruft around in the system.

 

I'm not sure why you were finding Popper was able to kill Pinup more reliably, since the same issue really should apply there.  It could just be a matter of the timing of when the respective programs fired off the "kill process" commands, or it could be that Popper has some special code to deal with zombie Pinup processes - they come from the same author, so it's possible he put in some special secret coordination that PBY doesn't have access to.

[LynnInDenver]

I'd be surprised if Popper doesn't keep track of - and take over the video windows from - Player, and vice versa.

[topper2k]

Thank you all. I'm thrilled to be able to run PinUp based tables in PinballY.

[NailBuster]

just for the record:  there's no 'magic' or secret method Popper uses.... Popper doesn't even know if the table running is using PuP Player at all...launch/close is same like any other emulator.

 

The advice to use taskill (like i said before) is bad advice.  If you're seeing the videos when you go back to your front-end then your table was closed 'dirty', meaning b2s/vpx/vpinmame didn't close out cleanly...which may cause problems in games you run afterwards.

 

the best advice is follow the suggestions here:  https://www.nailbust...urn_to_frontend

 

i would remove the taskkill as even processes like doflinx may be using that pup connection.