Getting black screen when I go into Mame option

[downtoozz]

I'm going to need someone that is going to be willing to be extremely patient with me here because I am brand new to all of this.  I have read through a lot of posts and get lost in a lot of what people are saying.  

I wanted to build a system so I could learn how to do all of this but I work a lot and whenever I started I just got overwhelmed.  I ended up finding someone that was selling a setup exactly like the one I wanted to build.  After getting it home and playing it I was sure I had made the right decision.  I loved it.  

The problem came about a week later.  I know this is a no-no but I didn't know what else to do.  I loaded up my Hyperspin and then went into the Mame option.  I looked through games for a little while and found one I decided to try.  When I went into it the system froze.  I waited a little while but it wouldn't do anything.  I couldn't ctl,alt,delete out of it or anything.  I ended up just shutting it down by the power button.

I then turned it back on and went back to the Mame option and it wouldn't even populate the games in there, it just showed a black screen.  It just froze there.  I was able to get out with ctl, alt, delete but every time I went back to that it did the same thing.  I can get into all of the other options to play games but of course the issue would come out of the one that I will go into the most.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.  I contacted the guy that I bought it from and he was in about the same boat as me, he knew how to play the games but thats about it.  

[Bungles]

Its probably scanning for games or media and not finding it perhaps.

Check your mame.ini settings and be sure paths if in there are correct.

Also be sure there is at least a default.zip theme in the themes directory for Mame.

Else, contact the douche who charged you money and have them fix it.