proconsu1

Need more info. Particularly need system specs. It sounds like either your system does not meet minimum requirements or you have a driver problem, but its impossible to say until we know what kinda hardware you have.

Gonna recap here, inserting a couple of assumptions. Correct me if I miss anything or assume something that didn't happen that way. You ran BOSS and it flagged the 3 conflicts I was sure of but not the one I wasn't sure of. You killed those three, and just for good measure you tried killing the fourth anyway. BOSS also reordered your mods in a minor way, so you went with that and then rebuilt a new merged patch. Testing with the new config and new merged patch you have so far found that the CTDs are gone but the game freezes are still happening. So we appear to have definitely fixed one problem, but only improved your situation half way. That about cover it? Assuming that is all correct, I have a few more questions and a coupla ideas. First the questions: 1. Is there any common thread to where or when you freeze up? Is it only indoors or only outdoors? Only when in populated areas? Only when sound effects or graphic scenes are triggered? Only when loading recent saves but not older saves....etc...? Will it still freeze if you have nothing in your inventory? The reasoning here is to see if the symptoms might suggest a culprit, e.g. if it only freezes outdoors then Enhanced Weather jumps to the top of the suspect list. 2. What is the average interval after loading before it freezes, and how variable is it? If the interval is consistently really short then we are prolly looking at a major scripting conflict, likely from mods conflicting with each other due to faulty installation or inherent incompatibility (the former more likely). If the interval is consistently longer then it is more likely a single mod that is just not stable. And if the interval varies wildly, short one time and then long the next, then there is prolly a trigger condition setting it off that just hasn't been recognized yet. 3. During the times when the game is not frozen, do you notice any other misbehavior, e.g. features not working as expected, odd sounds or graphic glitches, slow response to controls? ....etc...? This could also point us toward more likely suspects, if there is any such stuff going on. Now the ideas of things I would try out if I were in your shoes: 1. I would try creating a new character, and do NOT use the FWE alternate start option; just play out the growing up stuff in the vault. The idea is to see if the thing will run stable in the initial vault sequence and then only go agley after you exit to the world, which is the point when the DLCs and the majority of the mods start running their scripts and doing their biz. If it is agley from the word 'go', then either the entire installation is corrupted due to faulty mod installation, or the offending mod is one of those few that actually has significant effects running during the intro vault sequence (like PB and DarnUI). In any case this is something you can do in about 10 minutes, and it involves no fussing about, so I'd recommend trying it first. 2. I would try disabling most of the mods that are NOT part of the FOIP. That would be everything except FWE, EVE, MMM, and WMK. You may as well leave DarnUI alone, since it is a very known quantity. PB is also not worth disabling, since most of what it does it does during the install (replacing meshes and textures), so disabling it without uninstalling it would be kinda useless. Also, if PB were misbehaving it would prolly be a lot more visually obvious. Basically the idea is to disable all those elements that we are not 100% sure are interoperable (plus PB which tends to fail more visually or not at all). If the freezes suddenly go away, then we have narrowed down the suspect to list to just those few more minor mods or the not so minor weather mod. Then its just a matter of reenabling them one by one until the problem comes back. Or if it still fails, then flip flop, disabling all the FOIP stuff and reenabling the other stuff you disabled before. You see the method here, I'm sure. But there is really not much point to reenabling the individual FOIP-compliant mods one by one, cuz they are no longer set up for that kinda independent operation ever since you merged them and installed the FOIP mods to make them work together. 3. Wipe the entire FO3 install out and start over, and this time use a fully consistent, methodical FOMOD-only installation plan. This means making a separate FOMOD file each and every archive file of each and every mod, e.g. EVE would have 4 FOMODS to it and FWE would have 3, and so on. You would want to use a naming scheme for those FOMOD files so that it would be easy to know what order they need to be activated in later. Then once all FOMODS are made, you install them with a top down mod-centered approach based on your load order - i.e. the mod with an esm or esp at the top of the load order would be installed first, and all of it component FOMODS would be installed all at once at that time. Then the next mod that had a file appear in the load order would be installed in its entirety, and so. When all mods are installed, then install FOIP itself. Then run BOSS, make a merged patch, and get back in the saddle. That last option is, I fear, the one that will most likely prove necessary in the end. All that other stuff before is just wild ideas I had to try to find a way to avoid having to resort to option 3. My gut tells me that's the only real fix, though. I know from personal experience that install order is even more crucial than load order, particularly with mods like EVE and FWE that have multiple archives for a single installation. (EVE has patches for its patches, for Pete's sake!) Running more than two FOIP mods simultaneously just makes install order that much more critical. And bad install order is the one thing that can only be fixed by going to back to square one and installing it all again from scratch. But this time, since every single mod component will have been installed from FOMODs, FOMM will at least be able to revert back to a vanilla install to let you try different install orders without having to reinstall FO3 each time. That is why it is crucial that every single mod archive file be made into a separate FOMOD before a single thing is actually installed or activated. If even one mod is installed manually or by a self-installer, then that mod cannot be uninstalled by FOMM to clean up and try a different install order. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think any of your mods there are self-installer-only types, so this should work for you. Sorry for writing a frelling novel here, but your issue has really got me going here. You are that rare bird who appears to have done everything carefully and yet still gotten hosed. Been there. :wallbash:

OK, I noticed a few problems there that need attention. Posting that load order is turning out to be very productive: 1. Fellout is missing its plugin patches for your DLCs. These are not really critical, but they should prolly be there just the same. 2. You have activated the MMM plugins for the Broken Steel and Anchorage DLCs even though you don't have those DLCs installed. You need to deactivate both of those esps. 3. You have activated both "Increased Spawns" and "Increased increased spawns". These two mods do the same thing, but one is more extreme than the other. Pick the one you want to use and deactivate the other. 4. You need a merge patch.....badly. You should get and install FO3edit and use it to create a merge patch. If you need, I can give you a set of simple steps to do this if you are unfamiliar with merged patches. Just say the word. As for Archive Invalidation Invalidated, I would not recommend it since you already have a better method to hand, namely FOMM. Fire up FOMM and click on the "Tools" drop-down menu. The bottom option in it should be "Archive Invalidation" - make sure it has a check next to it. That will eliminate any archive invalidation problems in one easy step. Edit: I just noticed also that you have Anchorage, when at first I thought you didn't. My bad, so leave the MMM plugin for Anchorage and just deactivate the one for Broken Steel. And MOST importantly, move Anchorage.esm DOWN one slot. Nothing should EVER load higher in the order than Fallout3.esm.

I noticed one prob right off: you are doubling up on at least 3 of your MMM esps, and prolly 4 of them. I know for sure that Natural Selection, Tougher Traders and Zones Respawn were all integrated into the FOIP master file patch, and I think the master menu was as well. Those mods should all be deactivated for sure. You really should get and install BOSS - it will be able to warn you of other incompatibilities in there better than any of us likely can. So to start I would deactivate those extraneous MMM esps (edit: items 42 thru 45 in your posted load order). Then run BOSS to double check the load order (which looks good to me, btw) and to advise you of any other incompatibilities. Then make your new merge patch and give it a go. As to your box, 2GB of ram is really pretty marginal for a Vista/Win7 machine. Strongly advise you to go to at least 4GB if you are running either of those OS's. Edit: did you install FWE's DarnUI fix? It isn't related to your prob here, but if you don't have it then you will certainly miss it once we get you get back in operation. It is needed to enable proper functioning FWE's off hand grenade feature, IIRC.

No merge patch - that is the only thing that jumps out at me. Recommend you get and install FO3edit and use it to create a merge patch. Will be happy to give you the procedure in simple steps if you are unfamiliar with it.

Yeah, I'm with nicdude - we need that load order. It would also help if you could give a quick a rundown of how you installed those mods. That is, the order in which they were installed, the mod tools you used (FOMM, FO3edit, Wrye, BOSS) and whether you created a merge patch for them. Edit: oh, and big one, did you try loading back to an earlier save? Sometimes sudden, repeatable crashes on leaving a cell are the result of a corrupted save.

That isn't the entire load order info. According to that scroll bar in your pic, there are at least two more mods off the bottom of that screen that we can't see. Presumably one of them is your merge patch, but it would help to know what the other(s) is(are). Also, at least 7 or 8 of the mods that we CAN see have their names truncated because of the column formatting. Without being able to see the entire names of those esp files we cannot tell for sure which ones they are. And if you are gonna go to the trouble of exporting your load order, you might also wanna insert version numbers on the major players there, particularly FOSE, MMM, RH Iron Sights and most of all FO3 itself. Another suspect that comes to mind based on the frequency of your crashes is heat. Running that many mods means there is a lot of extra script activity going on, in addition to the normal load that vanilla FO3 generates. On a machine with marginal wiggle room, thermally speaking, the line between "runs fine" and "overheats every 10 minutes" can get pretty thin. That's such a simple thing to check, and simple to overlook, that I thought it deserved a mention. A few dust bunnies here and there inside your box could explain the whole mess. Prolly not, but worth looking. Edit: I just noticed one thing that needs fixing there, though it might be unrelated to your crashes: the Broken Steel plugin for Iron Sights is bugged. Rogue Hallow posted an alert a few weeks ago warning folks not to use it until he can get a fix out. (this is the kinda thing BOSS could prolly have warned you about)

Need more info, starting with specs on your laptop. Does it mean the minimum requirements? Also, this is the wrong forum - this forum is for problems with mods, not vanilla or official DLCs. You want this forum. I suggest you let this post die and post your problem - with details and specs on your machine - in the other forum.

I have noticed a similar issue with ME2, but only under Vista. I dual boot Vista and XP, and when I put in the ME2 disc while booted to XP, no probs. But when I boot to Vista the OS refuses to admit there is a disc in the drive at all. There is no read error message either, no disc thrashing as it tries to read past a smudge or scratch. It just flat tells me the drive is empty....every single time. If that is what you are seeing and you found a workaround, please post it or PM me, dude. Cuz I am dying to figure out what causes that.

Well done, good on ya. :thumbsup: Next time, though, you should post your load order (export from FOMM and cut and paste it). There are some mods that have known issues (and fixes) with official DLCs....actually a huge number of them. It's always better to get to the root cause after all, or the problem may just come back and bite you in an ever more sensitive spot next time. That's just my opinion, though, no need to go spreading it around.

No. Though FOMM will check load order in a similar manner to BOSS, it won't generate a list of all your mods with notations to warn you about potential problems the way BOSS does. When you run BOSS it actually checks each of your mods against its own online database of known issues, and then it loads the results into your browser via a script, so that you can see specific known issues on each and every mod you have installed with potential problems in bold print to help you run through it quickly. It also works and plays very well with FOMM, FO3edit and WryeFlash. We still need to see your entire load order before we can really answer questions like this.

Anytime, dude. And thx! 8)

I have to second Skevitj, we could help a lot more if we had more (and more specific) info. Here is the bare minimum you should include: 1. What versions of FO3 and FOSE you are running. 2. Load order of your mods (export it from FOMM and cut and paste it here). 3. Basic rundown of how you went about installing your mods. I.E. Did you use FOMM? Did you make a merge patch with FO3edit? Do you deal with archive invalidation by having it turned on in FOMM or are you using the Archive Invalidation Invalidated mod (the former is better)? Did you install the mods all at once and it went 'boom', or was it stable with most mods and only went agley when you added certain others? You get the idea. When it comes to providing info to get help in a tech support forum, MORE is more.

Generally speaking, no. Unless you really, REALLY know what you are doing with your mods, and what you are doing is more complicated than just installing and running your favorites, then everything from your load order should be included. If you just automatically click OK to the full mod list that appears after loading FO3edit, you should be fine to proceed with making your merged patch. You should only ever exclude something from the merge patch if you have a very specific reason to do so, which is not likely to ever happen to an average user.

You should also install and run BOSS. It will check your load order and generate a listing of all your mods with comments to alert you to known potential problems and incompatibilities. Anyone running multiple non-FOIP mods should really have BOSS ready to hand.

Nisen hit the most important things to check first, i.e. no masterupdate (just a merge patch) and make sure you are on latest revs of all the FOIP-related mods and files. I would only add that you might want to install and run BOSS. It will not only check your load order (which as you say is fine, I know) but it will bring up a listing of all your mods with notations as to other potential problems. Sometimes it will reveal that one little thing that nobody remembered to check, like that version of mod XYZ is incompatible with this version of mod ABC. If all else fails, I would uninstall all the main mods there (FWE, MMM, EVE, WMK, PB, Fellout and DarnUI), and then test that the game will now load correctly and that you can create a new toon and play all the way until you are out of the vault! (you should do this for maximum surety, i.e. to make sure your DLCs and their scripts will all activate correctly with the mods gone once you leave the vault - although it would be even better to just reinstall and repatch from scratch if you can spare the time). Next, check your versions on all your mods, making sure you have the proper ones and their hotfixes and such. Then clear out FOMM's folder of FOMOD files and make all new FOMOD files, making a separate FOMOD file for each individual mod archive file, putting numbers in the filenames of each part of multifile mods (like EVE and FWE) to help you remember the order in which you will need to activate them later. (e.g. for FWE the FOMOD you create for the main file part 1 would end in '1', part 2 would end in '2', the 6.03 hotfix would end in '3' - this will REALLY help with keeping EVE from going sideways on you, since it has patches for its patches and its install order is even more crucial than load order). Then once every single mod has had a FOMOD (or series of FOMODS) created for it, activate the FOMODS in the appropriate order all in one pass. Next hit it up with the FOIP. Then run BOSS to set the load order right and double check BOSS's listing for any gotchas you might have missed. And last of all make your merged patch in FO3edit, activate it in FOMM and give it a run. It is amazing how many experienced mod users wing it instead of following a logical progression like this, and then they end up having to spend hours and hours troubleshooting, often to no avail because a critical file was overwritten by an incompatible version or didn't even get installed and the whole mess needs to be reinstalled from scratch. I know I did it myself back when I was trying to run 8 zillion mods simultaneously in Morrowind.