Mame "Error: failed to open file for load operation"

[MikeyMike78]

Hi guys,

First off I want to say thanks for all the help I have been getting!

Now my issue... using mame 144, my mother in law and I have a bit of a competition going on in centipede and a few other games. So we need to track hi score. In order to do that I set the nvram state to 1 and this worked fine for about a week.

Now whenever I load any of the games in mame I get the following error: failed to open file for load operation.

I am not sure where things went wrong - any help would be much appreciated as I am tired of getting accused of purposely erasing scores!

**also, not sure it matters, but I am using Mala 174 as a frontend

[Dragon Mech]

i don't know anything about mame but i'm going to take a shot at this. try reseting the nvram state to 0 and delete all of the hi score files. and then tell us what happens.

[PMJPlay]

Are you using MAME with Hi Score support?

[MikeyMike78]

So I did the test suggested by dragonmech, the same results

Then I downloaded mame144b (64bit) off old computer and installed in a new directory and tried it and same results... very frustrating as the nvram solution was working a week ago (worked for about a month when I first set it up).

*edit: I should also note that when I exit the game I get a message stating that the state was saved successfully. So it really seems to be a loading issue... I guess...

[Dragon Mech]

try checking the save directory for your states. i might be that the emulator is saving the states to one directory and trying to load them from another.

[MikeyMike78]

Here's a cut and paste from my mame.ini file
# CORE SEARCH PATH OPTIONS
#
rompath C:\Arcade\Roms\Mame
hashpath hash
samplepath samples
artpath artwork
ctrlrpath ctrlr
inipath ini
fontpath .
cheatpath cheat
crosshairpath crosshair

#
# CORE OUTPUT DIRECTORY OPTIONS
#
cfg_directory cfg
nvram_directory nvram
memcard_directory memcard
input_directory inp
state_directory sta
snapshot_directory snap
diff_directory diff
comment_directory comments
#
# CORE STATE/PLAYBACK OPTIONS
#
state 1
autosave 1
playback
record
mngwrite
aviwrite
wavwrite
snapname %g/%i
snapsize auto
snapview internal
burnin 0


I have all of the folders listed in the mame file.

[Dragon Mech]

well this has me stumped. i wish i could be of further help.

[MikeyMike78]

Thanks for trying! Any other ideas out there?

[MikeyMike78]

So I finally got it working (for now at least)... I created a fresh .ini file from cmd and now it seems to be working. It didn't like something somewhere in the old .ini file.

[Dragon Mech]

i'm glad you got it working. i hope i keeps working for you.