proconsu1

Need more info, particularly about your box and your game installation. About the box: how much RAM, what make/model of video and sound cards, what OS and which service pack for the OS, and what utilities (other than sound or video) are running in your system tray? Don't really need to know the rest of your system specs, since you already verified that they meet the minimum requirements. I also won't ask about your drivers but rather just assume they are already up to date. But the rest of that info may help spot if you have a known incompatibility, and if so help find a workaround for it. About the game installation: what version did you patch to, what is the full pathname to the main fallout3 folder, have you tried adding any mods yet, if so which one(s), have you installed any FO3 mod utilities (e.g. FOMM, BOSS, etc) and which edition of the game do you have (original, GOTY, Steam), do you have any DLCs installed, if so which one(s)? I already anticipate that you will want to skip most of the info above and instead zoom in on those things that you think actually matter. I can only advise that you don't do that. More info = more help; also more info = less wasted time.

I'd advise you get and install FOMM. First thing you do with it is enable "Archive Invalidation" unders the Tools menu. Then give it a quick run through and see if anything gets better. If not, and it very likely won't, then go back into FOMM and use the option export your load order. That will create a text file; copy and paste the contents of that file here so we can see exactly what is installed and in what order.

Do you have archive invalidation enabled in FOMM (or are using Archive Invalidation Invalidated mod, which I don't recommend)? Did you build a merged patch? If so, have you kept it updated whenever you made changes to your installed and activated mods?

I hear Windows includes one called "Solitaire", or some crazy name like that. :tongue: If you are looking for something on the way-back machine, there's Bioshock, Dragon Age: Origins or Mass Effect (1 and/or 2). If you want something a little more recent, then there's Bioshock 2, Dragon Age II or...F:NV.

There may be merit to this, but in rebuttal I will point out that many modders don't know their butts from holes in the ground when it comes to making their mods work with OTHER modders' stuff. In fact, it seems like 90% of them think their own mod has be either the very last one to load or the very first one to load - nobody seems to think the middle is good place in the load order....except BOSS, and by extension FOMM.

I'll give you my version of how to get going with your modding plans. But I warn you, this is gonna read like a novel (with very boring characters). First, assemble your tools. You will need these modding utilities to properly install and manage the mods you download: 1. FOSE - Fallout Script Extender - this is a support utility that greatly enhances and expands the scripting options available for the people who write mods, and makes your Fallout 3 installation able to run these advanced scripts when you have such mods installed. Put simply, it allows some of the more advanced mods like FWE and FOOK to run - no FOSE = no FWE or FOOK (or any other advanced mod). Its installation is very simple, but pay careful attention to its notes on how to use it. You must NOT use the normal Fallout 3 launcher program any more or it will run without the FOSE code being loaded, and the mods that need FOSE will then promptly crash and burn in spectacular fashion. FOSE's install instructions will tell you how you can change your Fallout 3 shortcut to point to the FOSE loader program instead of the Fallout program, and/or how to launch FOSE directly from..... 2. FOMM - Fallout Mod Manager - most mods only include manual installation instructions, e.g. "extract this file into your \\fallout3\data folder....". I strongly recommend you ignore those kinds of instructions and use FOMM instead (but still read all the instructions to take note of other important info like incompatibilities and the like!).FOMM can take a zipped up mod file like those you download from the Nexus here and use it to build what is called a FOMOD file, which is a sort of organized installer/uninstaller routine for that mod. It only requires that you supply some missing bits of info during the conversion process, like the name of the mod, the website you got it from (just copy and paste the address of the page you downloaded if from) and a short description of what exactly that archive is. For that description I advise you include info that will remind you how to handle that particular component, since many mods have multiple components that must be installed in a particular order, e.g. "Main installation file for mod ABCXYZ, REQUIRED, activate this first when installing this mod"; "Patch A for mod ABCXYZ, REQUIRED, activate this after the main file but before the optional plugins"; and "Plugin 2 for mod ABCXYZ, OPTIONAL, activate after both the main file and Patch A". Use some variation of a scheme like that which will help you keep track of which files go with which mods, in what order they get installed, and whether they are necessary or merely optional addons/plugins. FOMM will also ask that you provide a filename for each FOMOD you tell it to create, and I recommend that you include numbers into these names to help you keep track of the necessary install order, just like you did with the descriptions, e.g. "ABCXYZ-main-1st"; "ABCXYZ-patchA-2nd"; "ABCXYZ-plugin2-3rd" and so on. Once you have converted the file(s) into FOMOD(s), you can simply tell FOMM to activate each component one by one - bam bam bam - and it will handle copying files into the correct folders, overwriting where needed; and it will keep track of everything it did. The main advantage to this system is that FOMOD files don't just tell FOMM how to install the mod; they also tell how to uninstall it and keep track of any files it may have overwritten so that it can put them back the way they were. The problem is that it is all or nothing, i.e. if even one mod was manually installed, it could screw up FOMM's ability to cleanly uninstall other mods and return things to their pre-modded state- not a big deal if everything works, but a HUGE deal when something goes wrong. There is also a vital option in FOMM's Tools drop down menu called "Archive Invalidation" - make sure this option is enabled or many mods will fail to work properly. When all the FOMOD-ing and activating of FOMODs is done, FOMM can also sort your now-installed-and-activated mods into a proper load order for you. More on this in the next section: 3. BOSS - Better Oblivion Sorting Software - it was originally written for Oblivion, but since FO3 uses the same engine it was an easy deal to update it to work for FO3 too, and they just didn't rename the thing. What this does is download a masterlist of known mod and their specs and known issues, and then compares your active mods against this masterlist. It can then use that info to sort them into a good load order (or FOMM can use that same list to do the sorting itself) and...drumroll...it will generate an annotated listing of your mods that includes known incompatibilities, special handling tips and other useful info you may need to know about how each mod works and plays with all your other mods. Always run BOSS after you make any changes to your installed mods in FOMM, just to double check that you aren't about to stumble across an unworkable combination or some such. 4. FO3edit - not really an editor, at least not as a mod user like you or me will be using it - this utility does another function that is vital for folks like us who use multiple mods - it makes a "merged patch" to help those mods work together without fouling everything up. I won't go into the details, suffice to say it helps avoid crashes and nasty malfunctions of all sorts. It is also dead simple to use. After you set things up in FOMM and check them over with BOSS, just run FO3edit. It will popup a listing of all your active mods - just click "OK" and then wait for a minute or so while it loads all those mods in. When it is done you will see a message on the bottom status bar that says "Background loader: finished" or some such. Now just move your cursor to a blank spot in the left hand panel and right click. A menu will popup, and you select an option near the middle called "Create merged patch". It will prompt you for a name for this "merged patch", so just type in something generic like "merged patch". Click OK and off it goes. In seconds it will have created that patch file which will look just like a mod. Now just load up FOMM one last time and make sure that "merged patch.esp" (or whatever you named it) is at the very, VERY bottom of your load order and is activated. Hit the button to launch FOSE and you're off! As for which mods to run, I strongly recommend you use Nexus's sorting function. First go to "Files" and choose the category of mod you are interested in, e.g. gameplay or quests or whatever. Then use the sorting function and tell it to list mods in descending order based on how many endorsements they have. Anything after about page 4 or 5 of such a listing is prolly either too old, too buggy or too lame to bother with. All the best mods will appear in those first 3 or 4 pages. You might also look to review sites like Gamespot, Gamespy and the like - many of them have articles posted in which they list their top 10 favorite mods, or most highly recommended mod lists...you get the idea. And last on this "which mods" issue - FOIP. The biggest and best overhaul mods, MMM, FWE, FOOK2, EVE and the like are all linked, so to speak, by the Fallout Interoperability Project, or FOIP. The FOIP is a set of extra "mod" files specifically designed to make these biggest, most popular mods work with each other. Be sure to check it out and get any components that apply to other mods you have chosen, e.g. if you decide to use MMM and FWE, there is an FOIP mod you will need in order for those two massive overhaul mods to work together. These instructions should tell you everything you need to know to get your feet wet....up to your eyeballs. That is when you curse my name, then come back here and tell us what's going wrong and we help you figure it out.

When you reinstalled did you check that it was stable as vanilla 1.7 before you started reinstalling the mods? Also, after reinstalling mods did you load in archived save files from the old install?

So it's a serious stability issue. Not surprising. You didn't say as much, but I am going to assume you took care of those other problems I mentioned earlier and are now at the merged patch stage: 1. Get and install FO3edit according to the directions in its readme file. Its a very simply thing, just putting two files into the correct folder. 2. Verify in FOMM that your desired mods are activated (and the undesired redundant esps are NOT!) and your load order is sorted by the "auto sorter" function. 3. Run FO3edit. It will bring up a window with a list of all your active mods - just click "OK" without changing anything here. 4. Now wait patiently for a minute or two as it loads in all those mods. You will know it is done when the status bar at the bottom says "Background loader: finished". 5. In the LEFT hand panel, in a blank spot below the last entry shown, RIGHT-click and select "Created merged patch". 6. Enter a generic name that will identify this merged patch to you, e.g. mergedpatch1 or some such. 7. FO3edit will then create the patch file, and it should put it at the bottom of your load order and activate it. Run FOMM again, though, to double check that it did end up dead last in your load order and is activated. And double check that "Archive Invalidation" is checked in the Tools drop down while you have FOMM loaded. 8. Launch FOSE and see how it plays. And then if it fails again, go back into FOMM and export your load order one more time and repost it here. It may prove useful to see what changes FOMM made as we try to figure out what else still needs attention. Good luck, dude!

Oh, dude, I am glad you can laugh about it. Most folks would either be crying or taking a cricket bat to their box. Good on ya!

Some people have indeed found WryeFlash produces more "robust" merged patches than FO3edit, although its procedure is more complicated. If you are comfortable with it, go for it.

A mod-induced error recurring after a reinstall without that offending mod? Sounds like your reinstall wasn't completely clean. Did you uninstall FO3 and delete the entire folder tree it had been occupying before reinstalling? Oh, and did you verify your reinstallation of FOSE?

It's always the little things, ain't it? Good catch though, cuz that is something that would never have turned up in a forum exchange. Good on ya. :thumbsup:

Yeah, that's fine. I would recommend missing a bit more, actually. Particularly I would dump the entire unofficial patch if I were you. In my experience it is not a good idea when you have two or more FOIP mods installed - seems to cause more problems than it fixes. @Blove - yeah, my bad. Didn't notice that 1.1. patch was for the older MMM.

Which file, precisely, are you editing and saving? An existing one? Or are you creating a new esp with this change in it and adding it to your load order?

Of course they were vile and corrupt! They belonged to a voodoo high priest. Oh, crap, I hope that guy doesn't read these forums, or he'll be hexing me next. :wallbash: I run .13.21 also, but it has only crashed once on me, when I was trying to update its masterlist. I fired it right back up and was able to continue working like nothing had happened. Can you keep FOMM running long to get anything done? If not, then you are gonna be forced to learn WryeFlash, dude.

You didn't read quite all of the directions, zeBadAcid. If you had you would have seen in the FOIP's readme that the MMM plugins called Zones Respawn, Tougher Traders and Natural Selection were all integrated into the MMM-FEW compatibility file from the FOIP and are supposed to be deactivated. So here is what you need to do: 1. Get and install the latest versions of FOMM (the one for both FO3 and FNV) and FO3edit. 2. Load up FOMM and deactivate those three plugins I mentioned. Next click in the Tools drop down menu in FOMM and make sure "Archive Invalidation" is checked. Then click the Help drop down and click on "Check for update". Last, click the Load Order drop down and select "BOSS Auto Sort". It will give you some warning about backing up your load order, but since your current load order is not really worth preserving, just ignore that this time and go ahead with it. Close FOMM. 3. Load up FO3edit. It will popup a window with a full list of all your active mods - just click "OK" without changing anything. Now do nothing and wait while it loads in all those mods - this could take a minute. You will know it is done when the status bar at the bottom says something like "Background loader: finished". Now look at the left hand panel, which should be a list of your mods, and right click in an empty space below the bottom entry. A popup menu should appear; select "Created merged patch". It will prompt you for a name, so pick something generic like "My merged patch" or whatever. Now it should build you a merged patch of that name and put it at the bottom of your load order. Quit FO3edit. 4. Load FOMM again. Make sure that your merged patch is indeed at the very, VERY bottom of your load order and that it is activated. If so, launch FOSE and try it out. 5. If it works, then yer golden - send me an IOU for your firstborn child. If not, then load up FOMM one more time, click Load Order, and select "Export". This will create a flat text file with your load order in it - copy and paste its contents here. And yes, zeBadAcid, I do figure you already knew quite a bit of this stuff and didn't need so detailed of a walkthrough. But the OP might not be so conversant, so I kept it simple more for his benefit than yours. I didn't wanna over-geek him right outta the gate and hijack his thread. :nuke:

If you load back to an older save does the problem go with you, or does it go away?

FOMM is crashing? Which version? Edit: Seriously, dude. Starting to think you really did boil some live puppies, and not in a past life. This is sounding like somebody put some serious voodoo on ya. @voodoo person who hexed freemailguy: I don't even like this dude. Leave me out of it. :whistling:

No prob. Strong suggestion for if/when you tackle reinstallation: use a totally methodical approach, where each and every mod archive file gets turned into a FOMOD, even if the archive only contains a single esp file. Use numbers in your FOMOD naming scheme to keep track of the order in which the individual FOMODS will need to be activated later, i.e. main file first, update second, compatibility plugin next, etc. If you do that for every mod you install it becomes very easy to make sure your install order is correct, and because everything was installed from FOMODs you can later uninstall mods easily and FOMM will have no trouble cleaning up after itself. Think "Terminator", going through every name in the phonebook one by one to get your target....be THAT kind of methodical with your installs. It pays off later, believe me.

Lemme check here and make sure I am completely up on current events: You had crashes, but when you deactivated your merged patch they went away. Making a new merged patch brought back the crashes, and now you are concerned that the lack of a merged patch is going to cause more trouble down the road, while having one is killing you. Is that a fair summation? If it is, then I suggest we revisit your question about Bash patches, which was an Oblivion thing where occasionally an esp's content was indeed merged into the patch and the original esp deactivated. But other times the esps content was merely tagged for list merging and conflict resolution, but the esp remained active. So WryeBash classified some esps as "mergable", while most were handled in similar fashion to what FO3edit does. If you are familiar with how to make a merged patch with WryeBash, then I suggest you throw out your current merged patch, get and install both BOSS and WryeFlash (the port of WryeBash for FO3) and jump on the way back machine to your Bash patching days. BOSS is really a necessary next step in any case, cuz it is the best (only?) tool out there for tracking mod incompatibilities and conflicts. So get that and run it first. It will sort your load order (but prolly not make much in the way of changes to it) and then generate a listing of all your current mods with notations on known issues, conflicts and incompatibilities. If will also compile a masterlist of mods with the appropriate Bash tags for all of them, which will be useful in the next step. That next step is where you get on the way back machine to your Oblivion days and use WryeFlash to make yourself a merge patch. Since you will already have an up to date masterlist with all the appropriate Bash tags for your mods, you should be ready to jump into it with both feet. I will swear on your sister's virtue that if the WryeFlash merged patch also fails, that the only method that will possibly fix your situation for good and all is a complete reinstall of FO3, your DLCs, the 1.7 patch and all your mods from scratch. And if that becomes necessary, then this time leave out the unofficial patch, cuz it tends to be buggy with multiple FOIP mods running simultaneously. Unlike Oblivion overhauls, many of which required the unofficial patch to work right, all those FO3 overhauls were written for and tested on vanilla 1.7. That is why not a single one actually requires the unofficial patch. BTW, I just noticed that FOIP has an update posted for FOOK2 1.1, so if you are forced to reinstall you may as well move on up to the shinier version.

Not a dumb question at all. FOMM's sorter isn't bad, not knocking it at all. But BOSS will generate a listing of your mods with notations of known issues and incompatibilities, which is something FOMM is not designed to do. This is very handy for spotting things like that MMM-FOIP redundancy you just hit. BOSS is intended to complement FOMM, not replace it. Also, FOMM cooperates with BOSS and in fact uses the BOSS masterlist for its own load order sorting. In any case, my advice is to have both installed. If all you need to do at a given moment is sort out your load order, keeping using FOMM like you always have. But whenever you install a new mod or make a change on which mods are running concurrently, run BOSS at least once to have it check for incompatibilities and such.

Dug it out and checked it, and while it doesn't say anything about disabling, it DOES say that it isn't compatible with version 1.1 of FOOK. What version of FOOK are you running there?

Prolly the easiest way would be to report your own post using the button in the lower left. Or if yer in a hurry you could just post a reply here asking the thread be locked, then go repost the thread in the other forum. The former is better forum netiquette, but I don't think there is near enough moderator time to deal with things quickly here, so the latter is prolly ok.

Hmm, guessing that means we have either a corrupted install of one or more of those most recent mods; or one those mods is itself bugged. Have you tried reverting?

I'd recommend Mod Talk. That is where modders talk to each other. The mod tech support forum is more for non-modders who need help installing and using mods they've downloaded.