32-bit emulator with a 64-bit engine

Technical code : BITNESS_MISMATCH_VPM

What it means

Two parts of your installation are not the same generation.

Why it happens

A 64-bit program cannot load a 32-bit library. Both files are valid on their own, but they cannot work together.

How Pincab Toolbox detects it

The free scanner checks the following:

Comparison of the PE headers of the executable and the library.

What to do

Your Visual Pinball is 64-bit, but the ROM engine (VPinMAME) is 32-bit. They cannot talk to each other: none of your ROM tables will start.

  1. First copy your whole VPinMAME folder somewhere else on the disk. You may need to come back to it.
  2. Note the VPinMAME version you have today, shown in the Diagnostic tab.
  3. Go to the official VPinMAME repository (github.com/vpinball/pinmame, Releases) and download the 64-bit build, the one with "64" in its name.
  4. Fully close Visual Pinball and PinUP Popper. Check in Task Manager that neither is running.
  5. Extract the archive and right-click each extracted file, Properties, tick "Unblock" if Windows offers it.
  6. Copy the files into your VPinMAME folder, replacing the old ones.
  7. Right-click "Setup64.exe" (or "VPinMAME64.exe" depending on the build) and choose "Run as administrator". That step declares the engine to Windows: without it, nothing changes.
  8. Run a new scan. If the red line stays, step 7 failed: do it again as administrator.

Check your own pincab

Pincab Toolbox is a free Windows scanner for Visual Pinball X and PinUP Popper. It finds and explains problems like this one. No account, no telemetry.

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Covered: Visual Pinball X (10.x) and PinUP Popper. Not covered: Future Pinball, Pinball FX, Visual Pinball 9 and the other frontends (PinballX, PinballY).

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