Visualboyadvance Emulator Only Returns a Blank Screen

I recently installed Visual boy advance from the software center. And I downloaded a romhack and whenever I open it with VBA the only thing that happens is I get a blank screen on VBA with a percentage at the top. I read on a different question to try using Mednafen. So, I went and installed that and got the same result. So, if anybody has any kind of advice to help me out here it would be much appreciated.