HELP!Retro FE doesn't work on start up, it needs to be closed and started again.

[hakay]

I need help!
I'm making a mame machine for my dad's birthday. I need everything to be as simple as posible so I configured an old win 7 pc to start up with retro FE, but the program doesn't work on start up, I mean, it works but it doesn't open mame when selecting a game.
It needs to be closed and open again to work. I don't understand why, and It's not a major problem but the Idea is for my dad to just turn on the computer and being able to play.

Anyone can help me? I'm pretty new in all of this. 

[Pieter Hulshoff]

Let me see if I understand correctly what's happening here:
1. You start the computer.
2. RetroFE is autostarted.
3. You select a game.
4. MAME doesn't open properly.
5. You need to close MAME or RetroFE? (not really sure which one needs to be closed and opened again)
6. You select a game, and it works.
Is that what you're experiencing? Can you upload the log.txt file so we can have a look?

[hakay]

Yes, I need to close retro FE and open it again, and then It works perfectly.

[Pieter Hulshoff]

Can you upload a log.txt file from after it failed to run?

[hakay]

So I was looking for the log file, And I realized what the problem is, the shortcut can't be outside the retro FE folder. how could I set up the shortcut to work outside the folder? Im working on an old win 7 pc and the only way I know to start a app on start up is moving it to the start up folder. I'm attaching the log anyways.

[Pieter Hulshoff]

Windows is unfortunately not my strong suit. You could try changing the starting directory for the shortcut in the autostart directory?
Anyone else have an idea on how to fix this?

[johnm]

I dont have RetroFE set up anymore but i think the problem is you are trying to shortcut to a shortcut in the retrofe root. What i did when i ran it from desktop/taskbar was make a shortcut to the retrofe.exe in the core folder then edited the properties for 'start in' to the RetroFE root.

IE: Target = C:\RetroFE\core\retrofe.exe
     Start in= C:\RetroFE

The reason for 'start in' for the retrofe root is that all the relative paths work from this, if you started from the core folder then the relative paths would be pointing to the wrong directories