Just wondering what version of MAME others are running on their cabs, and if you keep it up to date with the latest releases.  I've been running into an occasional problem where a game will freeze, the sound will loop for maybe 10 seconds, and then the screen will flicker for a second and the game will unlock.  Not sure if this is a WinXP thing or a MAME problem, but the first thing I think I might try is updating the MAME binaries.  I just checked, and it looks like I have 0.127 on there, and 0.138 is current.  

Has anyone else run into the same problem on a dedicated MAME machine?  I've also seen some pretty nasty slowdown in games, where the problem is similar to the above, but it'll run really slowly for maybe 30 seconds.  After that though, the screen flickers, and everything is fine.  It's also not tied to any one game or particularly intense effect, so it's likely something else that I should probably disable on the system.  Any recommendations for tweaks to WinXP or MAME to get it to run well?  I don't believe that MAME is set to run at high priority, but I've disabled the network card in the machine, and gone through and disabled services like automatic updates and real time scanning.  

What game are you running?  Some are more intensive them others, especially any using "3d" which could lead to this issue.  Typically, this is not a problem I see in mame (I use 0.118 myself); but I'm running mame on my 3.4ghz PC.  Also some versions are more buggy than others, so it's always possible and doesn't hurt to try new versions (but remember changing mame versions means some roms will need to be updated).

Although it's nice to have a streamlined PC setup; if your pc has sufficient horsepower to run the golden oldies, I find it a waste of time to fine tune my PC.  Aside from Donkey Kong (since they updated the sound to be more accurate... and needing more horsepower), I think almost everything from the golden era worked well (and even DK I think is ok, can't remember if I even tried it on my 3.4).

... come to think of it, I don't remember if I've even tried DK, that "fix" may have come after 0.118...

I think it came after there, since I have an older version of MAME on there just to run DK with the samples.  I'm running an old 2.1 GHz p4 though, so it definitely chugs away on newer stuff.  

The slowdown happens on a bunch of different games-I've run into it on SSF2T and Robotron most recently.  I haven't seen any correlation between what's on screen (complexity etc) and the slowdown though, which is what I found odd.  If I try to run something based on the Naomi hardware, I definitely see some serious slowdown, but that's to be expected, since the PC that's in there can't handle the graphics.  

I ended up rolling back the upgrade last night after a bunch of games wouldn't work because of ROM changes.  I'd forgotten that existing ROMS might need to change after an emulator upgrade-it's been a long time since I updated MAME or any of the roms on there.  I did take another pass through the services in XP and disabled a bunch of nonessential ones though, so maybe that'll help.  

Just a thought, but don't forget that you've still got the rest of the OS flipping bits in the background.  Download Process Viewer and monitor the mame process.  When a slow-down occurs, go back to Process Viewer and see if there was a spike associated with it....or with another process.

use 106, plays everything perfectly, no nags, high score support, not a burrden on the system, or anyother older version for that matter. I would only use 117 to play cps3 games, thats about it. Upgrading at this point is a waste imo, roms stop working, dont run the way they supposed too, unless theres something specific. I wouldn't bother