Of all the issues i’m facing with RetroArch, this one is by far the most annoying. When I scan directories, RetroArch only recognizes a few of them. I have all of them unzipped, so I got that covered. Anyone can provide me some assistance here? I’d really appreciate it.
Thank you for your time.
[QUOTE=Shiny;48439]Of all the issues i’m facing with RetroArch, this one is by far the most annoying. When I scan directories, RetroArch only recognizes a few of them. I have all of them unzipped, so I got that covered. Anyone can provide me some assistance here? I’d really appreciate it.
Thank you for your time.[/QUOTE]
This thread was created with Lakka users in mind, but I think it will answer your question as well: http://libretro.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6661
Thank you for the reply.
So from what I understand, RetroArch uses its database to scan directories for “validated roms”. And oh man, that link has so mush stuff to read! I’m a bit overwhelmed, i’m still a noob to RetroArch, but basically I have to manually create playlists? Sorry for the noobish behavior 
You can create them manually if you want but there are also a number of playlist creation/management utilities floating around the forum that can scan without using our databases.
Since we’re on this topic…
Well, I greatly appreciate the in-menu option to “Remove from playlist” that came up in recent versions. So now I’m kind of expecting the opposite to be added: an option to manually add single entries, regardless of databases. Are there any plans for something like this?
[B]Examples…
(For loaded games) Quick Menu > Add this content to a playlist…
An “Add to playlist…” entry in the menu when loading content from the file browser [/B] (Followed by a “Use filename” or “Write content title” selection after selecting the target playlist)
Although I completely understand the benefits of strictly going by databases (consistent titles for metadata and assets like screenshot, cheats… I know), I think this would be a great secondary complement. Even if you have a clean romset to begin with, there’s several cases where this would come very handy (romhacks, translations, or just any file the user decided to rename for some reason).
It would be a solution for people having trouble using external tools too.
Ok, I think I solved my issue with the scanning.
What I did was delete my entire rom collection, downloaded a newer and more complete one (GoodNES 3.14) and then what I did was I got this app called RomCenter which basically reduced the entire rom set to just the essential roms. After that I scanned these roms, and Retroarch seemed to scan them fine.
But now I ran into another problem: Retroarch is trying to read these roms with my Game Boy core, instead of one of my NES cores. I can manually load the ROMS with my NES cores fine with the Load Content feature, but no matter what Core I load whenever I load an NES rom it just displays a blank screen and when I go back to the UI I notice that RetroArch automatically loaded my Game Boy core and used it to load the ROMS. I tried to delete my Game Boy Core and run them again, but RetroArch closes itself after I click run. It’s weird, this never happened to me before.
go to settings > playlist and you can assign a specific core to a playlist.
…i’m dumb. That did it, thanks 
Someone can tell me how to know what roms are not being recognized? I scanned about 900 roms and in playlist only appears 880 roms. How do I know what files are missing?
Thanks!
That just means they don’t match our databases. You can do a ‘manual’ scan instead to catch them regardless of their CRC, but there’s no list of the ones that didn’t match.
Was this changed as of a year or two ago? Because I used to be able to use all my roms, now a lot of them don’t work any more.
Why isn’t there an option to toggle your database validation feature off?
No, no change in overall behavior, though the databases themselves have undergone changes since then. Regardless, the scanning has no effect on whether or not you can actually run the games, just whether they show up in a playlist.
Why isn’t there an option to toggle your database validation feature off?
That’s exactly why the manual scan option exists.
Got ya. Thank you for the reply.
I’ll have to look into the manual scan. I thought that was scan file, but after I do that I still can’t find the option to launch it. I must be looking in the incorrect location.