MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - Re: Why 20s delay when starting any game in MAME?

> I don’t play MAME game very often nowadays, so I’m not sure when it started, but
> every time I start any MAME game it takes 20s before it actually starts. I.e., I just
> see a black screen with a spinning icon for 20s whenever I start a game before it
> actually appears. This happens if I use a frontend, or just type e.g. "mame dkongj".
>
> I've unpacked MAME to a new directory, and tried older versions (back to 2019), but I
> still see the same thing. Has anyone else experienced this?

I can only guess since you give no machine statistics, no MAME version/Operating System or if you are using mamedev.org produced MAME or otherwise.

Are you using a lot of .dat files for information (mameinfo, etc)? This could slow things down. I've read some people having issues with NAS setups with ROMS and delays in loading/starting. Also, I experienced issues with Windows 8.1 (Windows Server 2012) when starting a machine there was a long unexplained pause the first time I ran a machine in a 'session'. You can also try other video modes such as "-video bgfx" or "-video opengl" to see if that improves your experience.