I have MAMEFE front end 2.7 and MAME.exe 126. It says there are no ROMs. I have the correct path to the ROMs in the settings. So, I tried a different front end. SMFE (simple Mame front end) and it also cannot find the roms, but there are more clues. It attempts to "extract game info" by accessing a temp folder on the C drive and finds nothing.
C;|DOC....\Temp\smfe_gamelist.txt is empty - operation failed - check console.
I have Mame on the D drive. Does Mame have to be on the same drive as the OS?
Seems quite slow over there lately, but someone should be able to help.
Not sure if that folder is where your ROMS should go as it's trying to access it there or else you have a corrupt FE version, so maybe find the latest on the net.
Any reason for using FE? If memory serves me right it's not as popular for support and user numbers. I use MAME32 as it's the easiest and one of the most updated.