Deleted133263User

Due to Bethesda forums going to a different forum ( Bethesda.net ), reproducing an important topic here on Nexus just in case all old topics fall off the face of the internet as Bethesda move on, and the old locked forums are no longer maintained. Original research and credit to Lojack and Wrinklyninja, I am just copying the info to preserve it on Nexus and AFK Mods --------------------------------------------------------------------------- BSAs and You Lojack : "We're back, with an update on the information provided in [iMPORTANT] BSAs and You! First off, make sure you've read [iMPORTANT] Load Order and You, by wrinklyninja. With the latest Beta patch for Skyrim officially getting sent out to all clients, there have been some changes to BSA Load Ordering that you might want to know about. Basically, the issues brought up in the previous thread have been fixed. So this post is only here for educational purposes, in case you're curious as to the order of resources loading. To summarize, the order resources are loaded is: Registered BSAs -> Plugin BSAs -> Loose Files With Registered BSAs being loaded in the order listed in Skyrim.ini, and Plugin BSAs loading in the same order as their plugins, which are loaded in the order they are listed in plugins.txt. Disclaimer: The game doesn't actually work exactly like this. This is how it logically works. As in, if you had to describe the decision process the game goes through, this is it. Realistically, working this way would be a waste of resources and processing time (why load up every file, when you already know a different one is going to "win"?). It's just much easier to understand if you think of it like this. A good description of how it would actually work is here. Contents: Resource Load OrderRegistered BSAsPlugin BSAsLoose FilesWhat This Means For Mod UsersOther QuestionsReplacing ScriptsDirectory ThrashingWhat are all these terms you use?What about Nitpick?Addendum: BSA Compression1. Resource Load Order Skyrim loads its resources from the Data folder. Makes sense. These resources can also be packed up into a nice neat little archive, called a BSA. These are Bethsoft's custom archive files, and internally they mirror the layout of the Data folder. They're nice, because they keep the Data folder uncluttered, and it makes it really easy to remove every file from one mod. Ok, but what happens when the same resource exists in more than one place? For example textures/dungeons/imperial/battlemap01.dds, which is the texture for the map you see all the time in castles, with the little flags and stuff sticking out of them. This file exists in Skyrim - Textures.bsa. That's the original file. If you download a texture replacer, you'll get it as a loose file probably, and if you download HD Skyrimmap from Steam Workshop, you'll get that file in a BSA. So which file actually gets used? Well, which ever one is loaded last. The game loads resources in three stages, with the last files loaded being what you see in game: Needs Investigation: With pre-1.4.26 Skyrim, only Registered BSAs and Loose Files were loaded when the game first loads. That means anything in a Plugin BSA won't take effect yet - but you'll only notice that if you're trying to replace a Main Menu asset, like the logo. Once you start a game, either by loading a saved game or starting a new one, then the Plugin BSAs are loaded. So in the example of Brumbek's Main Menu Logo replacer, if it's loaded via a Plugin BSA (like it is when installed via Steam Workshop), you won't see the spinning logo until you load a game, then exit back to the Main Menu. So the investigation needed: Is this still the case? I'll get back to you on that once I get the time to test it. Registered BSAs First the game reads your Skyrim.ini file. There's a section that tells the game which BSAs to load. It looks like this for most people: [Archive] sResourceArchiveList=Skyrim - Misc.bsa, Skyrim - Shaders.bsa, Skyrim - Textures.bsa, Skyrim - Interface.bsa, Skyrim - Animations.bsa, Skyrim - Meshes.bsa, Skyrim - Sounds.bsa sResourceArchiveList2=Skyrim - Voices.bsa, Skyrim - VoicesExtra.bsa The game will load the BSAs in order as listed, BSAs in sResourceArchiveList first, and sResourceArchiveList2 second. So if you manually register a texture replacer BSA (like the HD Texture packs), but put it at the beginning of the list - they won't load! Because the Skyrim - Textures.bsa will override them of course. If you put it after, or at the end of the list, or in the second entry, then they will load. Easy enough, but there is one drawback: There's a 255 character limit on each of these entries. This is because the game internally uses a 256 byte character buffer to receive the value when reading it. One byte is reserved for the NULL terminator (a byte with a value of 0, indicating the end of the data), so that leaves 255 characters for file names. If you want to get around this limitation, you'll need to use Nitpick. Plugin BSAs Next the game loads any BSAs associated with a plugin. When the game loads an active ESP, it also looks for a BSA of the same name (For Oblivion, there were naming conventions that allowed a single ESP to load multiple BSAs in this manner - this is not the case for Skyrim). So dummy.esp will make the game load dummy.bsa. This is true even if the ESP does absolutely nothing (for example, the official HD Texture packs do this, as well as Oblivion's Shivering Isles expansion). Cool! We found an easy way to make our replacement textures only load when we want! Just deactivate the plugin and they don't load, activate it and they do! Ok, but what happens if two Plugin-loaded BSAs have the same file in it? Well, it's easy now: whichever one loads last wins (as usual). But now there's a reliable way to control which order they're loaded in: they're loaded in the same order as their associated plugins. This means if dummy.esp loads before another.esp, then dummy.bsa will also load before another.bsa, meaning of course that another.bsawill win, because it loaded last. Sounds good, but I seem to remember there being other issues with using BSAs... Yes, nothing major really, unless you're trying to mod your game with a lot of plugins. Due to the way the game indexes plugins and stores the data in your save game, you can only have 256 active mod files. That's because objects are referenced by what's called a FormID, which is a 32-bit (4-byte) unique number, usually written as an 8-digit hexadecimal number. The first two hex digits are used to identify which mod the data came from. Two hex digits can represent a maximum of 256 unique numbers (0-255). Now, Skyrim.esm and Update.esm will always fill up two of those. Another one that's not obvious is your saved game itself - the one in use is always assigned the ID of hexadecimal FF, or 255. That leaves room for 253 other plugins. And here we get to our point: dummy plugins that don't do anything at all, but exist solely to make the game load a BSA? Yep, those take up one of our plugin slots. This might not seem like a big deal, but once you start trying to play with 300+ mods, you'll be faced with the hard decision of deactivating some mods. Luckily, dummy plugins you can just unpack the BSA and use the resources as Loose Files, then you don't need the plugin anymore. Other plugins can be merged via Wrye Bash into the Bashed Patch, further cutting down your mod count. And hopefully an equivalent of TES4Gecko will come out eventually, which will be able to merge mods into a single plugin. This last one however has an impact on your saved games, so it's for the more advanced user only. Needs Investigation: Another small strangeness associated with Plugin BSAs, at least with pre-1.4.26 - they aren't loaded until you load either a saved game, or start a new game. That means if you're still at the Main Menu for the first time, any replacers loaded this way haven't taken effect yet! Woah! Not a big deal, unless you're trying to replace the Main Menu Logo... Oh wait. That mod works fine when installed as Loose Files, or if the BSA is registered in your Skyrim.ini, but it only works as a Plugin BSA after loading a saved game. This behavior still need to be verified now that 1.4.27 Skyrim is out. Loose Files This one's simple. If the file exists in the Data folder, it will always win. It will always be used, even if the same file exists in a Registered BSA or Plugin BSA. This is how most texture replacers work, and this is what mod managers like Wrye Bash or NMM are made for. Managing the Loose Files so you don't have to track them yourself. It's easy to keep track of which file came from which installer when you only have 3 mods. But when you get up to 150 mods, each with their own resources, a lot of them overlapping, a mod manager just takes the headache out of it. 2. What This Means For Mod Users Not much really. There is one minor disadvantage to all this: Steam Workshop uses BSAs by default, even for texture replacers that don't need a plugin. That means you end up with an ESP that is only there to load a BSA, taking up one of your 253 mod slots doing it. If you start getting close to the 253 mod limit, you can cut back by either: (Recommended) Unpacking those BSAs to Loose Files. A useful tool for unpacking the BSA is DDSopt. Once the BSA is unpacked, just pack up those Loose Files along with any documentation into an archive, and install with your favorite mod manager. Now you can deactivate the plugin, saving you a mod slot.(Not Recommended) Register the BSAs. This method you'll use your Skyrim.ini to load the BSAs instead of using a plugin. First you'll need to deactivate or delete the plugin. Next, you'll need to add the name of the BSA to your Skyrim.ini, in the following section: [Archive] sResourceArchiveList=Skyrim - Misc.bsa, Skyrim - Shaders.bsa, Skyrim - Textures.bsa, Skyrim - Interface.bsa, Skyrim - Animations.bsa, Skyrim - Meshes.bsa, Skyrim - Sounds.bsa sResourceArchiveList2=Skyrim - Voices.bsa, Skyrim - VoicesExtra.bsa: The reason I don't recommend this method is that it's harder to change the order. This method you need to edit your Skyrim.inieach time you want to change the order, whereas with Method #1, you just either change the Installer Order of the package in BAIN, or in NMM. Also, you'll run up on the 255 character limit pretty quick, which means that you'll need to make use of Nitpick, which in turn requires SKSE. There's nothing wrong with requiring SKSE, but you'll have to wait for a SKSE update after each game update.Again, each of these tricks only works if the plugin in question is an empty, dummy plugin, solely there for the purpose of loading the BSA. You can check this using TES5Edit or another similar utility, or right click on the mod in Wrye Bash and select 'Mark Mergeable...' to find out if the plugin is empty. Wrye Bash will tell you if the plugin is empty, but it won't say anything at all relating to its "emptyness" if it's not empty. 3. Other Questions Replacing Scripts Pre-1.4.26 for Skyrim, you couln't replace a Vanilla Script file with one in a Plugin BSA. This is no longer true, it has been fixed, and script replacers should work as both Loose Files and Plugin BSAs now. Directory Thrashing What is it? link. Basically, simply having too many ESP, ESM, and BSA files (even inactive) in the data directory would cause Oblivion to go crazy, bringing your game to a crawl as disk I/O went through the roof. It's why Wrye Bash has the Auto-Ghost feature. Does it affect Skyrim? Sort of, but not in the old sense of the term. There's a different problem with Skyrim, such that if you have over 508 mod files in your data directory, the engine just plain refuses to load any of them, active or not. To fix this, use Nitpick. Wrye Bash's ghosting will also work here since, Wrye Bash will not allow more than 255 active plugins at once, and ghost the rest, meaning you will at most have 255 files in the data directory with .esm or .esp extensions. There's also the added problem of plugin INI files (which pretty much no one uses - no fix for this), and part of the old thrashing problem, where the game tries to read inactive plugins. For the last issue, again Wrye Bash's Ghosting feature still works good. What are all these terms you use? I used a bunch of terminology here, most of it old, but there's a couple new terms I made up for this explanation. Plugin - any .esp or .esm file.ESM - Elder Scrolls Master. Usually saved as a .esm file, which has the same format as a .esp file, only one bit (as in, one bit of a byte) is different.ESP - Elder Scrolls Plugin. Most mods are ESPs, but some are ESMs. Their format is the same, but the game handles them slightly differently in some specific cases.ESS - Elder Scrolls Save. Your saved games. This is loaded after all the ESPs and ESMs are loaded, so that its changes (like what items are in which containers) can override what the plugins say.BSA - Bethesda Softworks Archive. Sort of like a .zip file, but specific to Bethsoft's games, and optimized (sort of) for their specific usage.Load Order - The order that your mods (ESPs and ESMs) are loaded. When conflicts occur, the last loaded conflict "wins".Install Order - The order that files are installed into your Data folder. When multiple packages install the same file, the last installed package "wins".BSA Load Order - The order that the game engine loads BSAs. When conflicts in data files occur, the last loaded BSA "wins".Plugin BSA - A BSA that the engine loads because an ESP/ESM with the same name is active.Registered BSA - A BSA that the engine loads because it's listed in Skyrim.ini.Loose File(s) - A resource file in the Data folder that's "loose", as in not packaged into a BSA.FormID - A unique ID assigned to each "record" of a plugin. Each object in the game is defined by a record, and each record has a FormID. A FormID is 32-bits, with the first 8 bits defining which ESM or ESP the record belongs to.SKSE - Skyrim Script Extender. A nice utility that everyone should be using. It aims to extend the functions available to scripts written for Skyrim. It's also useful as DLL loader, if one wants to inject some code into Skyrim's game engine.SD - Script Dragon. Another DLL loader, but with a different goal in mind than SKSE. Both can work along side each other.Vanilla - A term referring to Skyrim as distribute by Bethesda and Steam. This means no modifications have been done. Alludes to the "plainness" of the vanilla ice-cream flavor.What about Nitpick? I'm still maintaining it. shadeMe may also release updates as well, he has access to the Skyrim Nexus page, so either he or I can update it. The Nexus page also has links to the source code, but here's shadeMe's source and my source, links in case the Nexus is down at the moment. 4.Addendum: BSA Compression This question comes up often enough to deserve an answer here: What's better, compressed BSAs or uncompressed BSAs? To quote Ethatron: Ethatron said So for the most part, compression is good for you. There are a few cases where this might be detrimental though: At very high compression rates, it seems some files are affected - notably sound files seems to take on a "fuzzy" sound to them in many cases. Textures and Meshes should be fine going to max compression, but be sure to test things if you're going to up the compression on your BSAs. Edit by Alt3rn1ty typo's plus .. : For reference as to what not to compress at High Compression levels - See this topic first post ( Any original BSA flagged as UnCompressed by Bethesda, is a pretty good bet contains 'some' files ( not necessarily all of them ) which should not be compressed ) Credit to Fireundubh on STEP forum for finding out the spoilered information

Cleaning the Official Master ESMs NOTE : This guide is now out of date - I dont have any Bethesda games installed anymore, and xEdit has changed greatly since I last had it installed. Anyone wishes to re-do this guide on a new page bringing it up to date .. Crack on :D This guide assumes using TES5Edit on Skyrim Nexus, Or SSEEdit on Skyrim SE Nexus Due to this guide being dual purpose ( For Skyrim and Skyrim SE ) for the rest of this guide I will refer to both tools as xEdit. Screenshots of tools used may be one or the other, or older versions, which does not matter, the images are only to illustrate the method / options used. Why Clean the Master Files ? Before moving on to the Manual cleaning, something everyone should do prior to Manual Cleaning : Automatic cleaning of Bethesda's ESMs with xEdit With the games Original esm's installed ( You can use Steam to Verify Integrity of Game Cache of Skyrims files to ensure you have good error free copies of the original master files ), and in accordance with the following wiki article http://www.creationkit.com/index.php?title=Skyrim_Dirty_Plugins_List : Load up xEdit. 1. Right click the plugin selection screen and select "none" 2. Tick the relevant esm to edit, and click okay ( If you have not cleaned any of your Master files yet, the first one to tick will be Skyrims "Update.esm" ), then click Okay After each of the following actions, wait for a message in the message window that the previous operation has finished / Done : 3. Right click the plugin after you get the "Background Loader : Finished" message,and choose "Apply Filter for Cleaning" Wait until Filtering is finished then .. 4. Right click the plugin and choose Remove Identical to Master Records Wait until it finishes then .. 5. Right click the plugin and choose Undelete and Disable references Wait until it finishes then .. 6. Close xEdit, and it should check with you that you wish to save the plugin ( this only happens if you have made any changes to the plugin to save, if it just closes .. Then you have not cleaned anything ) Rinse and repeat the Automatic cleaning ( steps 1 - 6 above ) for each of the master files. Working from first to load, to last, not including Skyrim.esm or any unofficial patches ( No point doing Skyrim.esm, and the unofficial patches are already done and should not be cleaned ) So clean in this order Update.esm Dawnguard.esm Dawnguard.esm ( Yes it needs to be done twice ) Hearthfire.esm Dragonborn.esm Dawnguard.esm needs to be cleaned twice ( as of xEdit 3.1 onwards - After doing the automatic cleaning routine once on Dawnguard.esm, and saving it, load it up again in xEdit and you will be able to clean a further 6 ITMs ) ------------------ Dawnguard.esm needs manual cleaning aswell as automatic cleaning After the automated cleaning is done, you can also now manually clean a few more Wild edits xEdit will not have touched ... Recently Arthmoor has brought to the attention of the community additional information regarding manual cleaning of Dawnguard.esm, which everyone needs to do for their own setup same as automatic cleaning ( because nobody can legally upload official master files anywhere, everyone needs to do their own ) First load up xEdit When the plugin selection comes up, right click and select None Then put a tick in the box just for Dawnguard.esm, click Okay After its finished loading, right click Dawnguard.esm and choose "Filter for Cleaning" 1. For "CELL 00016BCF: Remove XEZN subrecord referring to RiftenRatwayZone [ECZN:0009FBB9]. Otherwise it blocks the official fix in Update.esm." .... Expand the records as in the following screenshot, and right click the indicated sub-record, and choose Remove 2. For "CELL 0001FA4C: Wild edit. Remove this record. It's a testing cell." .... Expand the records as in the following screenshot, and right click the indicated record, and choose Remove 3. For "CELL 0006C3B6: Wild edit. Remove this record. It's a testing cell." .... Expand the records as in the following screenshot, and right click the indicated record, and choose Remove NOTE : This guide used to include cleaning instructions for "CELL 00039F67: Wild edit. Remove this record. It's a testing cell" ( The WICourier edit ) - But since the new version of TES5Edit 3.1+ now cleans that as part of the automated cleaning ( which you should have done prior to manual cleaning ), you no longer need to clean it manually afterwards. ----------------------------------------- Now that the Master files are cleaned, you could put them in a zip, and get your mod manager to install them - Maybe at a future date you want to do a refresh of steam cache and it redownloads the masters which are not the same as the originals anymore (because you cleaned them), so then you would need to reclean them again. But beware, Bethesda have started redoing some masters due to Creation Club mods compatability, so make sure any redownloaded masters are not newer than your previously cleaned ones, because in that case you will need to reclean and rezip them again anyway. You can go through the rest of your Load Order using Automatic cleaning of ITMs and UDRs on all your mods plugins. The sequence of cleaning mods plugins should be after you have your Load Order correct, masters are cleaned, then clean them with the last to load being the last to clean. Mod authors should have done them already, so most will probably not need cleaning. Also look out for any mod specific cleaning instructions in the mods description. Prime example = The Unofficial Patches will not need any cleaning, they are already done, and any remaining ITMs in those plugins should be left alone because they do have a purpose .. ( its a very rare occasion when this is true ). The xEdit Work In Progress Development topic is at the following link https://afkmods.iguanadons.net/index.php?/topic/3750-wipz-tes5edit/ Development project is at GitHub https://github.com/TES5Edit/TES5Edit And newer versions of xEdit (3.2.7 +) have a link to Discord top right of xEdit window.

See also a post by Zilav http://afkmods.iguanadons.net/index.php?/topic/4110-manual-cleaning-skyrim-master-files/page-4&do=findComment&comment=161384 If you need to know the Checksum of the resulting file, TES5Edit 3.1.3 now has a function to show you that too

Rustic Clothing has bad file uploads today too .. I dont think Gamwich is aware of the problem yet, but the fans of the mod are filling up the comments with the same problem reports http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/69784/?

To anyone who still needs to follow this guide : I am currently updating it ( some old direct links to wiki paragraphs have been lost due to Bethesda re-organising their wiki's ) So to become less dependant upon other links and information, I am fleshing it out a bit with more images It also needs an update to file CRCs ( at the end of the first post ) due to Zilavs recent changes to xEdit So you now need to be a bit more up to date and use the Work In Progress version of xEdit available from Fallout 4 Nexus ( link for this in the first post has also been updated )

Will do, the most recent article made for that mod I deleted the notification for that yesterday, but again today had to do the same for the same article .. So it may well occur again, if it does I will leave it as is and notify in this topic without deleting it. Bookmarked for reference.

Could the site implement a preference to stop Article Notifications I dont know if they are triggered by : "Receive notifications for files you are tracking" I get notifications for articles created for Realistic Lighting Overhaul But the file which is receiving articles which occasionally bug me with notifications - I have stopped tracking the file, and still receive notifications for Articles for that mod ( I am guessing that would be the case for any mod you cease tracking for ) I am not in this case tracking the author either, so I dont think that preference option is making me receive them And the articles typically do not just come up in notifications once, but repeatedly for the same article ( possibly triggered by re-edits or author moderation of the article ? ) I used to track the file, but as mentioned that has not been the case for a while now, so should the articles also have been cut off by disabling file tracking button on the mod page .. and that has failed ? Note : Before anyone reads anything into this that is not intended ( I realise the mod concerned is a sensitive issue ), this topic is purely about what I perceive to be a problem with the site notifications about articles and lack of choice to stop them. So do not use this topic to air any personal feelings.

Thanks for listening ( eventually ) Dark0ne

Five years on from the OP and the site is finally realising that the advice by the guys at MVPS hosts may actually have something :facepalm: http://www.nexusmods.com/games/news/12805/? Good to see anyway Dark0ne :thumbsup: Also good to see advertising buccaneers are amazingly also getting a clue .. http://adcontrarian.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/can-ad-industry-can-save-itself.html Jaw hit the floor when I first had a good read of that, they are waking up to shooting themselves in the foot Anyway, a point to note here, if you are looking for weeding out bad providers, see the link in the OP, the hosts file is very well researched, has a good set of criteria to determine which sites go in the hosts file to block ( keeping them legal ) .. And is the biggest basis for most AdBlockers lists ( You dont really need one when using this ). It is still being maintained many years after it was conceived ( at time of writing Updated April-01-2016 ), and shifting sites are weeded / refreshed as necessary when bad sites are no longer extant ( sometimes within days after they were created ). I get that I could have Premium / Supporter - But I dont trust online payment methods to keep my details secure So I contribute by providing content to the site, generating lots of views and thousands more visitors to the site ( thats fair enough isnt it ?, free hosting for files I created which attracts more revenue views for the site, thats the deal as I understand it for mod authors ) ( I also enabled the support the author buttons, unfortunately the Donate to author buttons paying for Supporter status on my behalf have not worked in my case thus far :sad: ) .. Aaanyway !, Told you so :tongue:

Paid for RapidSSL ? Is LetsEncrypt free SSL not suitable ? https://letsencrypt.org/ A lot of companies are endorsing / using this now

Its taken down because fleckster who was maintaining the mod page has had his account compromised, and someone else is now uploading malware in his name .. So LOOT v 300 was not created by Wrinklyninja, and you should be taking all measures to ensure your machine is clean of any virus See this post http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/3527110-loot-load-order-optimisation/page-51&do=findComment&comment=36646685 And the response by Millenia ( I think Micalov started investigating the file uploader ) And pStyl3 was the one who initially took action http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1601446-rel-loot-thread-23/?do=findComment&comment=25129160 Wrinklyninja has now been given admin control over the mod page, which I would imagine is still being investigated so that all evidence of what happened is logged. Edit : Also if you go to the mod page http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/5310/? Yes its hidden, but if you read why it is hidden, then you will find a link to where else you can download it safely.

:) Got another one for you DynDOLOD Guide - For Wrye Bash Users http://afkmods.iguanadons.net/index.php?/topic/4289-dyndolod-guide-for-wrye-bash-users/

In response to post #35698967. #35701342, #35702772 are all replies on the same post. If everyone did not use flash, would you really miss the few videos these days which dont use it but instead use HTML5. Most YouTube videos have now been converted by google so you do not need flash, and the latest versions of google chrome do not allow the full blown flash to work in their browser, they allow pepperflash ( which is sandboxed and reprogrammed by google to be safer ), but the full blown adobe installer version ( either Flash, Shockwave or Adobe Air plugins which break privileges and are in the news at least once per month for being vulnerable to yet another zero day exploit ) .. nobody needs anymore. Authors will change video formats quick enough if they are not getting viewed because dinosaur plugin dependencies are no longer used.

Seems like the subject is quite timely .. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35821276 Cryptowall via adverts

Nice. Personally I have nothing against advertising But if the advertising companies cannot ensure their feeds do not include any malware due to their lax security, then they will always be blocked When one piece of malware can encrypt your hard drive and hold you to ransom, it has become a lot more lucrative than the old annoying virus from bedroom hackers which never really did any harm. They also now help to promote botnets, the purpose of which is many and varied and often include criminal organisations or other uses such as paedo networks Anyone want to know what your machine is capable of when pwned by botnets / rootkits etc have a look at The Scrap value of a hacked PC When Ad networks sort their security out, and can guarantee they are serving ads, AND ONLY serving ads, then I will not use any kind of adblocker People cannot be blamed for protecting themselves The ad companies are shooting themselves in the foot, by not caring enough about what their networks serve up to end users. Thats the problem. MVPS Hosts have known and protected against such problems for years ( most of the adblocker plugins use the hosts file list as a basis for updating their plugins database of bad sites ) Plugins like UBlock Origin have now become so efficient at blocking this crap that they have become a major concern, enough that advertising companies may now actually listen to what we are telling them and actually give a s#*!, instead of being typical dog-eat-dog "any method will do so long as it beats the competition" buccaneers ( better words are available for such parasites ). Good move Robin, hope it actually teaches the ad company something. Get reporting those bad ads people :) I notice recently too that some are suggesting ads ought to use the old method of animated GIFs instead of video ( convert vid to gif ) = less bandwidth used from many sources on page and less opportunity for malware. Current use of bandwidth by video ads on the internet is ridiculous.

So you have a fresh download of Update.esm from steam ( verify cache )( if you delete the game original esm's that will guarantee steam will get you fresh copies ) You used version 3.1.2 of TES5Edit, you ticked just Update.esm in the load box, you chose filter for cleaning you chose remove Identical to masters And the results were wrong ? If all the above is correct I suspect voodoo magic. :ermm: Joking asside I have seen a couple of other people getting different results, but really do not understand why. If we are all working from exactly the same original plugins ( check the CRCs in the first post at the end, for a definitive check on those originals being correct ), and we are all using the same TES5Edit and using the same procedure, there just cant be any variation. ( FYI the couple of instances where people had different results, were with the multi-stages of cleaning Dawnguard.esm, they went away and went through the procedure from the ground up again .. And then got the same results as we would expect, so what went wrong for them initially could not be determined - You are the first I know of to have had problems just with update.esm ) Regional variations of the plugins causing differences in results - I doubt it, Gruftlord on AFK Mods topic uses a German version of the game http://afkmods.iguanadons.net/index.php?/topic/4110-manual-cleaning-skyrim-master-files/page-2&do=findComment&comment=158434 Check the CRC and MD5 checksums of your original game files, if there are regional variations I cant help with that. If its pirate files ( which makes modding the game a mess of wrong RefIDs ) the solution is get the legitimate game.

Request : When FO4 CK is released - A tag search option to not include any mods and authors with mods which were released Pre-Geck So we can lessen the chance of downloading mods not created with official methods Thanks

Updated the end of the OP to include MD5 hash for each file cleaning stage

@Dark0ne - Will you be adopting SQRL when it is finished ? Steve Gibson is apparently very close to completing the initial version With regards to site passwords it will be a dream come true for users https://www.grc.com/sqrl/sqrl.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQRL and the development newsgroup discussion .. https://www.grc.com/groups/sqrl Users basicly click a QR code on page, and they are logged in. Thats it. They just need to run a SQRL client for windows. No site hackers will be able to get hold of any user passwords ever again.

Uploaded new image for CRC checks at the end of the guide

Updated the OP - To reflect Release of TES5Edit 3.1.2 on Nexus Also there was a discrepancy of how many records were processed after the last edit noting 68 ITMs instead of 64 on Dragonborn.esm, the processed records of UDRs now reads 214318 processed records instead of 214322 ( minus the 4 additional records removed prior to doing UDRs )

Tumbleweed city :ohdear:

Amended the OP - As noted by Elgar if using the latest W.I.P of TES5Edit, it will clean 68 ITMs from Dragonborn.esm ( previous versions cleaned 64 )

On the LOOT home page http://loot.github.io/ Click the link to the FAQs ( in the sentence under the Download button ) Pretty sure there is mention of blank screen problems there But also if that does not help ( I think the FAQ was to do with Internet Explorer anyway ) .. Upgrading from such an old version as 0.6 is probably going to be problematic with the new version not reading old settings files well So delete all the settings files etc in : C: \ Users \ <Username> \ Appdata \ Local \ LOOT \ <<-- Delete everything in here ( Replace <Username> above with your windows account name ) ( You may have to enable being able to see Hidden files and folders, in Windows Control Panel Folder settings ) There were a few times when deleting everything while beta testing old versions and snapshot updates that a clean out of those files solved quite a few problems .. Between official updates, running the uninstaller before running the new installer could help too .. But a new development is Wrinkly had to change from the old NSIS installer ( hosted on sourceforge which nobody wants to touch anymore ), to something called the INNO installer .. Unfortunately with that change the Installer lost its ability to clean out old user files at install time .. So TL:DR just delete those appdata files and fire up the new version, see if that works. Any further problems : Report them here http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1519842-rel-loot-thread-19/ ( But note .. Wrinkly is off to Canada on holiday for about three weeks )

Not quite, LOOT does look inside plugins and looks at what records are being changed by the plugin It also does an evaluation of most amount of record changes in a mod ( which conflict with other mods ), should be loaded first. Giving plugins which alter the same records, but not so many as the bigger mod, a chance to be in game. So an overhaul is likely to be placed early, where a mod which changes just a couple of records which conflict with the bigger mod is likely to be placed to load later. Its a fair bit more complicated than that though - Have a good read of this https://wrinklyninja.github.io/2015/05/23/loot-v0.7-sorting/ ( No, really, have a GOOD read of it - Also check out that graph when you get to the "Visualizing the plugin graph" bit - zoom into it by right clicking the image and open in a new browser tab ) After all it can do is done, if you are still not happy LOOT has you covered by giving you the tools like Load After metadata, and manually setting priorities. People just need to learn how to use them to their advantage with their load orders. LOOT ( or any other tool ) will never be able to achieve the perfect load order for every possible mod combination out there, or to satisfy everyones preferences as to what they want to win. Only you can do that, LOOT gives a pretty good stab at it, you refine it with the tools provided. For mods which are definite ( proven with TES5Edit ) unique load order cases in combination with other mods, then those need reporting for adding to the masterlist, otherwise nothing changes. When it comes to the subject of sub-records which need to be made to jump the load order, that needs a patch in one form or another .. LOOT cannot be expected to cope with those problems. IMHO it does a pretty good job considering, but yes it does need user refinement, thats why it gives you functions to do that. Version 0.8.0 has been released. http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1519842-rel-loot-thread-19/page-6 In the following screenshot Relighting Skyrim is being made to Load After the two colourfullightsnoshadows plugins, so that Relighting Skyrim changes win ( In that case I was wanting the no shadow casting changes, but everything else about the same records to be RS, so got RS to load after the others, then used Smashed Patch to import the kill the shadow caster records into a later loading smashed patch ) http://i.imgur.com/OD6xEgO.jpg You all did know about Drag n Drop when editing metadata right ? :smile: