164 replies to this topic

[TonyTitan]

I too did as 'ninefolddragon', cleaned Update.esm & Dawnguard.esm....I didn't purchase Hearthfires. But so far, *knock on wood*, my CTD's that I KNOW that I used to get in areas due to Dawnguard, have stopped.

[v1p3r01]

Does the bashed patch also needs cleaning every time you clean a mod which the plugin covers? Or you need to just clean the initial mod and then rebuild the patch?

[Sharlikran]

Does the bashed patch also needs cleaning every time you clean a mod which the plugin covers? Or you need to just clean the initial mod and then rebuild the patch?

I would post that in the Wrye Thread, however my initial guess is no, never clean it. Always rebuild it. I have been working on that project as well, but I only update skyrim.py which contains Skyrim's record structures.

[Sharlikran]

Okay for the love of peat. I won a copy of Photoshop CS a log time ago. I want to draw a square, or ellipse around something. No matter which of the first ten or so links I use from Google they all have the same instructions. I can draw an ellipse, I can go to "Layers" window and set fill to 0%, but there are no pictures nor any detailed instructions how to draw a simple ellipse with no fill and a say 10 px, or 5 px red border. Does anyone know how to do it? Remember I won this so I have no idea what anything is. No you don't need to post pictures, and make a Wiki page, but some details would be helpful.

Note: The tool I have selected, the is Fill and Stroke are grayed out under Edit.

EDIT: Here is how I want it to look.

[Sharlikran]

A user provided this answer:

Sharlikran, Maybe I am missing something, but can't you just use the Microsoft Paint editor through Irfanview?

Look at it this way. I have built computers since I was in 9th grade. I have always does things with whatever was available. I updated to Windows 7 from XP because I wondered if I would get a performance increase playing Skyrim with a Pentium D, which isn't supported for Skyrim. I got the increase but, old habits die hard, and why would I ever open paint? It doesn't do crap!

Now with that said, I am working off old knowledge and I often don't go poking around and opening up windows programs for the sake of doing it. So when I opened paint and the graphic I was amazed to see that there are actually useful tools! Thanks for the suggestion.

Edited by Sharlikran, 21 October 2012 - 02:54 AM.

[StayFrosty05]

I downloaded TES5Edit....followed instructions to a 'T'', everything came up in it's proper order....apparently cleaned the 'Update.esm'.....BOSS reaffirmed that....approached the 'Dawnguard.esm' next....and that's when everything went south for me.... ....Firstly TES5Edit refused to touch Dawnguard....so I quit the program read mention of running the Skyrim Launcher....did so and now my game is completely crashed.....As soon as the Bethesda logo comes up the game immediately now crashes to desktop.....Figuring I may have done something very wrong (I am very much a noob), I disabled all my mods (about 80) reinstalled Skyrim....It started working again though the Update.esm 'dirty edit' was back...but figured I am not going to play with fire again....updated my ini....Restarted the game again and slowly started feeding my mods back in....I have used all these mods for quite some time now with no problems....had less than a quarter re-activated, running the BOSS as I always have and the game has gone south again.,...Crashing as soon as the Bethesda logo comes up.....Any idea as to what's going on?...Is there some way I can reset my game to prior running the TES5Edit?.....I obviously have no idea what I am doing with it and obviously screwed up in the instructions somewhere....am hoping Gopher decides to add it to his list of walk through's.....as for now all I have managed to do is break my game....

Edited by StayFrosty05, 21 October 2012 - 10:23 AM.

[Sharlikran]

Go to the official forum or this will be a long wall of text that will be really hard to read.

I downloaded TES5Edit and followed the instructions to a 'T', everything came up in it's proper order. Apparently cleaned the 'Update.esm' and even BOSS reaffirmed that. I approached the 'Dawnguard.esm' next, and that's when everything went south for me. Firstly TES5Edit refused to touch Dawnguard so I quit the program. I saw something that mentioned running the Skyrim Launcher. I did so and now my game is completely crashed.

As soon as the Bethesda logo comes up the game immediately crashes to the desktop. Figuring I may have done something very wrong (I am very much a noob), I disabled all my mods (about 80) reinstalled Skyrim. It started working again though the Update.esm 'dirty edit' was back, but figured I am not going to play with fire again. So I updated my ini and restarted the game again and slowly started feeding my mods back in. I have used all these mods for quite some time now with no problems. I had less than a quarter re-activated, running BOSS as I always have and the game has gone south again, crashing as soon as the Bethesda logo comes up. Any idea as to what's going on?

Is there some way I can reset my game to prior running the TES5Edit? I obviously have no idea what I am doing with it and obviously screwed up in the instructions somewhere. Hopefully Gopher decides to add it to his list of walk throughs because now all I have managed to do is break my game.

I edited your post because all the "...." doesn't help make it easier to read at all.

I am sorry it appears that TES5Edit broke Skyrim for you. Also keep in mind that TES5Edit can't break Skyrim. I have done tech support for over 8 years. I have been in school to be a Physical Therapist but temporally quit to get back into the work force since as I work on my Bachelor it will be to expensive to do while being unemployed. This is going to be hard to do in a forum but I will do my best.

One reason it will be hard is because you can't easily tell me everything you have done. To you something that worked, or seems unimportant to mention, could be very important. That's why over the phone support is easier because at least I can ask clarifying questions as I go along. I can also actively listen and when I hear a mouse click or the customer using a keyboard I can ask what they are doing. Normally they think they can make changes I have not asked them to make because it's how they have been doing something in the past. However, that does not help especially in a situation like this.

Introduction and Acknowledgement:

Spoiler

Here is what I see in your message:

You ran TES5Edit, and cleaned Skyrim.esm and when you went to clean Dawnguard.esm it caused issues
You ran the skyrim launcher and nothing changed
You disabled your plugins and reinstalled Skyrim and it still crashed after that.
You made Ini changes
You activated mods that were previously deactivated one at a time and ran BOSS as you have in the past.
Things were working up to a point but then, at some point the game started crashing again.

Here is what I don't see in your message:

You did not mention whether or not you use Nexus Mod Manager, and which version.
You did not mention what version of Skyrim you are using.
You did not mention whether or not you use SKSE and which version
You did not mention what version of BOSS you use and where it is installed.
You did not mention whether or not you use Wrye Bash
You did not mention which Ini file, or files, you altered and what you changed in the Ini file(s).
You did not mention whether or not you altered uGridsToLoad in Skyrim.ini and what value you set it to.

First things first. There is no restore point for Skyrim like there is for windows. I hope you did not or haven't ran that yet as if you do it really removes and changes files all over your system to the point that we probably can't resolve this in the forum. So don't get the idea to do that, or Google it and try it out. If you did then please be honest and tell me. I will try to help if you have done that, but it will make it really hard to do and I may have to give up at some point.

So when I read your post exactly as you wrote it you say you reinstalled Skyrim and then activated deactivated mods. You do know that's a contradiction. You can't do that because if you completely uninstalled and reinstalled Skyrim then the Data folder is empty. I'm only being very literal because you did something, Skyrim does not work, and now you are asking for help. So yes, I need to mention things like that.

If you don't completely uninstall and reinstall, and then copy files you may be missing important parts of the mod or you just copied a bunch of erroneous files and in both cases that will cause Skyrim to crash. If you use NMM but you don't know how to reset the install folder then it won't know that you uninstalled everything. So uninstalling everything, then using the original mod file to install the mod manually or installing the mod with NMM is very important.

When you clean Skyrim.esm and Update.esm you follow the instructions, then exit TES5Edit which saves the Update.esm but not Skyrim.esm because you only cleaned Update.esm. Then you open TES5Edit again, and then open Skyrim.esm, Update.esm, and Dawnguard.esm. This time you only clean Dawnguard.esm. This is an experimental version so as mentioned if you have never used it and don't know what it is, it might not be a good idea to use it. The Cleaning Guide didn't mention to clean one file at a time, since it is assumed users already know that before hand. This was mentioned earlier in the thread. So if you tried to clean one then the other in the wrong way that will cause a problem.

Before you start these steps ask questions to make sure you understand. Once you start following my steps don't stop mid way of you may not resolve your issue at all, and that could require another reinstall of Skyrim, but that may leave you in the same place.

So if you are going to start following these steps, then do what I suggest in the order I suggest it. Do so after you have read this fully at least once and understand all of it. If you don't use NMM Skip that part.

Step one:

Spoiler

Before you do anything else, open up steam and make sure you are not subscribed to the Skyrim Beta. Don't do anything else because I am going to have you remove some files and we will come back to Steam later.

If you are using SKSE then make sure you are using version 1.05.11. If not don't install it. You could also delete the files that start with SKSE and copy the 1.05.11 files into the Skyrim folder where TESV.exe is located just to be sure you have that version.

Go to the folder where Skyrim.ini and SkyrimPrefs.ini are and make a backup of those files. For Windows 7 they are in C:\Users\[computer Name]\Documents\My Games\Skyrim unless you have configured something so that they are in another location. Use a zip program or whatever you need. Then delete them because we need default files to be sure what is happening. I will make INI suggestions later.

Now we need default files like plugins.txt and such. Go to C:\Users\[computer Name]\AppData\Local\Skyrim and you should see DLCList.txt and plugins.txt. Delete all the files you see here, including SteamModList.txt if it's there because they will all be recreated later.

Step two NMM:

Spoiler

So since you already reinstalled Skyrim lets start with NMM. You need to make NMM think you don't have anything installed. I don't know where you installed it, but the important folder is called Install Info. It is something you can configure with NMM so open up the Settings panel by clicking on the gear at the top of the screen. You will see three tabs, General, Mod Options, and Skyrim. Click the Skyrim tab and look at the Install Folder and write down or remember it's location. Go to that folder and open Install Info. We will be deleting all the files inside of Install info (like InstallLog.xml, and InstallLog.xml.bak) here since they will be recreated. Just delete them or drag them carefully to the trash. Make sure you delete the overwrites folder also.

Step Three Data Folder:

Spoiler

Now you need to work on your Data folder. There are two ways to do this. If you use Wrye Bash, and you have version 300 or higher there is an easy way. Don't go get it and install it if you don't already use it because it adds a new level of complexity to what you are trying to resolve. If you use the SVN version or v301 it's totally safe to do with Dawnguard and Hearthfire installed. If you have version 300 then it could delete important Dawnguard files, but it won't matter because they will be restored later. So again if you have it open it up and go to the Installers tab which is the first one. Right click the bar that says Package and go down to Clean Data, it will tell you what it's going to do. Click yes and let it remove the non Skyrim files in the Data folder.

If you have Wrye Bash and you just did what I mentioned above, then skip this part. If you don't have Wrye Bash then you need to have a somewhat clean Data folder before doing the next step. To get it clean enough for the next step open up the Data folder. You should only have the following files in that folder.



Notice in the screen shot there are no yellow folders. That is important, don't worry they will be restored later.

Step Four validate Skyrim's Cache:

Spoiler

Since we have a clean Install Info folder and we are ready to install mods with NMM or manually if you don't, and since you have a fairly clean Data folder we need to get all the rest of Skyrim's files. This won't take too long because we left the really big files in the data folder. If you are not connected to the Steam Workshop do so now.

Open Steam Workshop. In Steam go to the Library tab, right click on "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim", click "Properties", go to the "Local files" tab and click the button labeled "verify integrity of game cache" This will get all the missing files you need to run Skyrim. If you have purchased Dawnguard or Hearthfire it will make sure they are up to date. This will also update any files that are corrupt or outdated.

If you have the Construction Kit you need to do this as well. However, we are going to skip this since it doesn't affect Skyrim at all. All the files that you get when you "verify integrity of game cache" for the CK are strictly for the CK.

Use the Skyrim Launcher, not SKSE if you have it installed. This will recreate all the configuration files, your Skyrim.ini, your plugins.txt everything. Now at this point you and I both know that you have everything you need to play Skyrim and it should start and won't crash at the logo. You should get to the screen where you can make a new game or load a save game. If it's working now I am not going to leave you hanging, however, understand that anything you do at this point can cause Skyrim to crash. Even if you have done it in the past if you don't know what you are really doing and just read somewhere to try this then it's going to cause issues and game crashes. After this step if you decide to follow anything else please remember I'm only human and I might leave something out since I know it should or shouldn't be done. You need to know what and why your doing something before you do it.

Step Five Installing Mods:

Spoiler

Use NMM to install the mods you use or manually install them using the original file from the Nexus. Don't restore any kind of Data folder backup to save time. The game could crash if even one file isn't found that Skyrim wants. Just because you installed a few mods and run BOSS that won't cause Skyrim to crash. So even if it's a pain, only install one at a time, run BOSS, and then test it out. If it crashes before you get to the title screen then remove that mod. It doesn't matter if it worked before because you are using the latest non Beta of Skyrim. Many mods have Dirty Edits that cause issues which is the reason for the Release of TES5Edit and they need to be cleaned. Each time Bethesda makes a fix, yeah that fixes something, but it will break mods that have issues, that did not seem to have an issue because the data in them is outdated. That is what TES5Edit is made to resolve.

Since you did not have much luck with TES5Edit I can understand that you don't want to play with fire as you put it. So don't use it until the next version because it has been changed to make cleaning easier. I have also been working on two guides. I am going to make one for users that have used Edit in the past and don't need a lot of hand holding. The other will be for beginners that have no idea what to do or whats happening.

Step Six Making Ini Edits:

Spoiler

If you had trouble with TES5Edit then don't make changes to your ini file yourself. One thing that causes a crash, not at the loading screen, but when you try to load a save game is uGridsToLoad in Skyrim.ini. What happens is that uGridsToLoad is saved in your Save Game like other ini and plugin settings. If the value in the save game is different from the Ini file, when you load your save game this setting will cause Skyrim to crash right away guaranteed. If you did ever edit this you need to set it to whatever it was before. Only save games with the same setting for uGridsToLoad will load at this point. You can fix save games and use a different setting but that is an advanced procedure and not one I'm willing to explain.

What I am going to suggest is to use Skyrim configurator to make your Ini file changes. It will make backups, and you can restore a backup at any time. Just never change uGridsToLoad with it either.

Now lets recap what we did. If you followed everything I have outlined you have done the following:

You made sure you are not using the Beta and you verified you have all of Skyrim's files as well as fixed any corrupt files
You created new load order files when you opened the Skyrim Launcher
You made sure you are not using a modified ini file which can cause Skyrim to crash
If you used NMM you made sure it knows you started with a clean Data folder so that it can properly keep track of your mods
If you manually installed files yourself, you now have all the required files so that Skyrim won't crash. The disadvantage being you can't uninstall loose files reliably such as textures, scripts, and other plugin related files.
If you make Ini modifications you will chose a method to restore your ini file if a change you make causes Skyrim to crash.

Edited by Sharlikran, 21 October 2012 - 11:11 AM.

[soopahfly]

@Sharlikran: How to make anything with stroke and empty fill: draw anything, double click on the layer in the panel and open effects window. Choose stroke, set thickness however you need, then set fill opacity to 0. edit: http://i.imgur.com/d5lR1.png

Edited by soopahfly, 21 October 2012 - 10:48 AM.

[StayFrosty05]

@ Sharlikran.....Okay....First off Thank you so much for your patience and the obvious great deal of time you have set aside to help me, this is very deeply appreciated, thank you.

It is late here now, I am in Australia (trying so hard here not to use '....' it's proving difficult ) I have read through all of your instructions in full for the first time now, I will do so over and over again and slowly limp through them tomorrow and follow every step religiously. I am pedantic about not pressing buttons (usually.... ...) until I am precisely instructed to do so, even more nervous about it now considering my latest adventure....

I am very sure I have the latest versions of SKSE, BOSS and NMM installed and have the latest 1.7 Skyrim update. I have Dawnguard but not Hearthfire and won't be getting Hearthfire in the forseeable future. Was planning on downloading Wyrebash but have not done so and after this spook I doubt I will for quite some time yet.

By 'Restore Point' do you mean restore to previous settings? If so, you have caught me just in time as that had been on my plan to do list tomorrow. I would have done it today but I had forgotten how to. I am relieved you have caught me in time.

I don't know what 'UGridToLoad' is and can only hope I haven't done anything there. But as I mentioned it is getting late here and my head will be clearer come tomorrow. thank you again Sharlikran, will be back tomorrow and working through your instructions.

[Sharlikran]

@ Sharlikran.....Okay....First off Thank you so much for your patience and the obvious great deal of time you have set aside to help me, this is very deeply appreciated, thank you.

It is late here now, I am in Australia (trying so hard here not to use '....' it's proving difficult ) I have read through all of your instructions in full for the first time now, I will do so over and over again and slowly limp through them tomorrow and follow every step religiously. I am pedantic about not pressing buttons (usually.... ...) until I am precisely instructed to do so, even more nervous about it now considering my latest adventure....

Don't be pedantic or nervous, relax, put on your favorite music, get your favorite beverage and then start trying to get Skyrim working. Being tense when trouble shooting won't help.

I am very sure I have the latest versions of SKSE, BOSS and NMM installed and have the latest 1.7 Skyrim update. I have Dawnguard but not Hearthfire and won't be getting Hearthfire in the forseeable future. Was planning on downloading Wyrebash but have not done so and after this spook I doubt I will for quite some time yet.

Don't be read comment below.

By 'Restore Point' do you mean restore to previous settings? If so, you have caught me just in time as that had been on my plan to do list tomorrow. I would have done it today but I had forgotten how to. I am relieved you have caught me in time.

I think that's what it's called, and that would have made insane changes and totally unnecessary.

I don't know what 'UGridToLoad' is and can only hope I haven't done anything there. But as I mentioned it is getting late here and my head will be clearer come tomorrow. thank you again Sharlikran, will be back tomorrow and working through your instructions.

It's ok. It took me about 2-3 hours to write, and re-read, but it's important. Even before I started working on TES5Edit I had game crashes all the time and for a while I was without Skyrim because of it. So I know how it is. I wouldn't want to be without Skyrim either.

You could get Wrye Bash, the SVN or GNU Tarball would be the best and there are install instructions. It will at least fix leveled lists which is also helpful. Know what you are doing is different from be afraid of doing anything that might cause Skyrim to explode. I made cleaning mistakes while learning the program and writing the documentation. I made tons of mistakes when starting the TES5Edit and TESVSnip projects. So you and I are both the same in that respect because we both make mistakes just different ones. Don't put off using a tool that will help Skyrim run better and Wrye Bash is one of the three most important utilities along with BOSS, and TES5Edit for getting the game working smoothly. Yes there are others, but those are the only three I use

Edited by Sharlikran, 21 October 2012 - 04:28 PM.