RetroArch Freezing Intermittently

RetroArch Windows devices
#1

I’ve been running RetroArch 1.2.2 without issue on one of my PCs for a few months. Today I tried running it from a second PC (RetroArch is installed to a network drive) and while RetroArch starts and runs I am getting some intermittent freezing. Every 10-30 seconds the screen freezes for about a second. The sound stops and no input is received. The CPU and Memory usage on the PC look fine to me and I haven’t had any issues running applications on this PC previously.

I have tried running a local version or RetroArch, updating to the latest nightly, downgrading to 1.2, playing with the video configuration options, etc. Nothing has resolved the issue. Has anyone else seen this or have any advice on where to look to troubleshoot?

#2

You should see if it prints anything to the console window when before/when it freezes. If there’s nothing there, maybe try running it through gdb, if you know how to do that. (in both cases, make sure your logging level is set to 0 (debug)).

#3

Thanks. I didn’t see anything specifically happening at the exact time of the freezes but I did notice a couple of odd things:

-The following lines are appearing over and over again:

RetroArch [INFO] :: Found joypad driver: “dinput”. RetroArch [INFO] :: Found XInput v1.3. RetroArch [INFO] :: Enumerating DInput joypads … RetroArch [INFO] :: Done enumerating DInput joypads …

-The monitor refresh rate seems very high:

RetroArch [INFO] :: Average monitor Hz: 246.791708 Hz. (558.008 % frame time deviation, based on 2048 last samples). RetroArch [INFO] :: Average monitor Hz: 246.791708 Hz. (558.008 % frame time deviation, based on 2048 last samples).

I ran the same tests on the machine that works and saw only one instance of the of the joypad info and the monitor refresh rate is around 60.

Maybe I have an issue with the joypad driver? I know my monitor drivers are a bit wonky because I’m using an old HDTV via HDMI and had to hack the driver to get Windows to display properly but it hasn’t caused any issues with other applications.

#4

:open_mouth: yeah, that’s probably at least somehow related. I’m not sure what to do about it, though.

#5

I’m going to try uninstalling the joypad drivers next week when I have some more time and see if that helps.

#6

Uninstalling and reinstalling the joypad drivers seems to have fixed the issue. Thanks for your help.

#7

Glad to hear it, and thanks for posting your solution :slight_smile:

#8

I know it’s a bit late to respond, Blank white background screen helped me identify the freezing issue with RetroArch on my second PC. It made it clear how the display behaved during the freezes, which helped me narrow down the problem.

In my case, the issue was with running RetroArch from a network drive. Moving it to a local drive and updating all relevant drivers resolved the problem completely. I would recommend trying this to see if it works for you!