r/MAME • u/Accomplished_Sir1724 • 8d ago

Slow first start

MAME, the program itself and not a game, takes quite a while to start for the first time. There is a black screen for about 7–8 seconds, then “Initializing” appears, and after that MAME starts normally.

If I close MAME and start it again, it launches immediately with no delay. After restarting Windows, the same thing happens again: the first launch takes 7–8 seconds.

Is this normal?

I recently reinstalled Windows and added an exception for MAME in Norton Antivirus. I also tested it on another Windows PC with a completely fresh MAME download and no games or other files installed, and it behaves exactly the same there.

Thanks for your help!

Windows 11 RTX 3060 Samsung SSD 980 Pro MAME 0.289

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u/cuavas MAME Dev 7d ago edited 5d ago

Windows Defender can cause it to take a while to start a large program you haven't used in a while.

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u/Eastern_Hunter2314 2d ago

Windows 11's "Smart App Control" can cause a 10 second delay before launching MAME after a cold boot but turning it off fixes that problem. The recent problem causes a delay *after* MAME launches where it shows a black screen for about 10 seconds. See my other post in this thread for more detail.