11.9 Update Failures

[James Snell]

I tried updating a working 11.8 version to 11.9 and got an error notice from Norton Antivirus that an update process was blocked. The update was a failure and the 11.8 version no longer worked. The 11.8 version was located on a folder named “games” in the C drive root. I tried copying the 11.8 version to my E: drive in a “games” folder and running the 11.9 update and got the same error and Launchbox would not execute. I did a new installation of 11.9 on “users\James” my user account location as recommended which succeeded but copying my games into the “games” folder in Launchbox didn’t do anything. Launchbox did not recommend my games. After some bad language, I started importing over 1000 msdos games one at a time and have reached 400 or so over the past two weeks. Today Launchbox does not start up (no error message). Disabling Norton makes no difference. The Bigbox executable will start up today and shows the games I have imported, but switching to “desktop more” in Bigbox immediate exits and nothing is shown on the screen (no error message). Your 11.9 update has been a total failure from the beginning and as of now all the work I’ve performed in the past installing and getting msdos games to run is wasted. Since Launchbox stopped working today, I’m wondering if Bigbox won’t stop running in the future. I do have a perpetual update license but I’m starting to wonder if it was worth purchasing if updates destroy past installations and force performing all the game installation to be performed again.

LaunchBox version was 11.8 which no longer works due to the 11.9 update. Windows version is Windows 10. The issues occurred once due to the 11.9 update. Norton version is the latest one installed January 2021 and is the 360 version with Lifelock utilities premium. I can’t reproduce the problem as nothing regarding Launchbox works now. There is no error text, nothing happens when starting the program. There was an update of Windows 10 within the last 7 days or so.

[Retro808]

Check to see if Norton already quarantined either the Launchbox.dll or the Launchbox.exe. We have seen antivirus software report false positive and LB and/or BB and quarantine files. Even though you say you disabled Norton and no change it likely already quarantined it.

[James Snell]

Neither file is quarantined.  In fact, the quarantined display window in Norton is empty (no entries).  The problem remains unchanged.  BigBox will start up, LaunchBox will not.  If I run LaunchBox as an administrator, I get the window requesting authorization to for LaunchBox to change files on this computer.  When I select "Yes", the window disappears and nothing else happens.

[Jason Carr]

Hi James, first off, you should never run LaunchBox as administrator, as that causes various unnecessary issues. Where is LaunchBox installed? That can cause problems if it’s installed to a folder that requires admin rights.

At this point, I’m not sure if the issue is related to Norton or not, but I wouldn’t put it past it. This thread might be worth a read here: https://forums.launchbox-app.com/topic/59593-unable-to-update-or-launch-bigbox/?do=findComment&comment=374110

We always recommend completely uninstalling Norton and using Windows Defender instead. Details on this are in the above post.

[James Snell]

I've solved the problem by retrieving my installation of LaunchBox version 8.9 from my backup drive.  It executed correctly and immediately gave me an "update available" notice on the screen.  I gave it permission to do the update which executed correctly and updated my version 8.9 to version 11.9.  When I started the 11.9 version of LaunchBox, my games were present.  Norton did not prevent the update or give any error messages.

[Christian]

User stated his issue has been resolved and is now able to launch LaunchBox correctly