BasedBuilders

About a year ago, I installed several mods at once. One of them had a darker stainless steel option--can't remember if it was FOMOD, or just a specific file to download. I went with the darker stainless, thinking I could always change back later if I didn't like it. Well, I DIDN'T like it, but when I went back a few weeks later to remove whatever-it-was, I could no longer remember which one it was. I tried disabling a few of the ones that seemed like they were from around the right time, but no such luck. I even spent hours sorting through all the texture files, trying to find something that might be doing it. I have a total of 520 installed mods--love me some esl flags--so it's small wonder that I couldn't find it. Some examples of things that are affected are the stainless steel cafe counters (the part stainless/part white ones aren't affected), Realistic Bar Items*, and the Vault 88 experimental soda fountain. Some examples of things that AREN'T affected are vault furniture like tables/nightstands, coffee machines, bathroom fixtures, and kitchen cabinets/fridges/stoves. Anybody know what mod did this so I can remove it, or at least install the version that doesn't stain my stainless? Failing that, anyone know where the texture(s) for stainless steel cafe counters/appliances/etc live? It seems likely that one .dds file is being used for multiple items, which would explain why my search attempts have failed: I'm looking for the wrong keyword(s). * I was convinced at first that RBI was the culprit because their description shows both a light & dark cooler set, but disabling it doesn't seem to do the trick. ----- (And to the mod author, the reason I don't like it is because it doesn't uniformly darken the various bits of stainless, and because it's a too dark, period. Whatever the mod was, I clearly must have liked it otherwise, since I've evidently still got it installed!)

Yeah, that bit was both extremely helpful and extremely annoying--helpful, because I still had lots of useful info on the hard drives I pulled from my dead computer, but annoying because all the detritus meant it wasn't too useful in terms of actually putting it on the new machine. I wish now that instead of moving mods from the old to the new, I'd just re-downloaded everything; it probably would have been faster, and definitely would have been a lot cleaner. Although on second thought, a dozen or more of my favorite mods have since been deleted by authors who got mad at Nexus, so they would have been gone permanently for me if I hadn't had that backup!

Okay, since I had trouble finding answers to this question, I'm going to go ahead and answer myself with what I did, so that the next person with this problem at least has a little something to go on. I started with a fresh reinstallation of FO4. Then (and I'm leaving out all the fails here, btw) I started a new character, and got it just far enough that I could save. Then, I found where the game placed that save, and I copied my old saves there. (FO4 put them on my boot disk instead of on the same drive as FO4, even though there's also a User folder on the FO4 drive. So, Boot Disk C:\Users\your-user-name\Documents\My Games\Fallout4\Saves is still the first place to look, even if you install FO4 on a different drive.) That done, I did a fresh installation of NMM. After telling it where my FO4 was, I went with all the default directory options. (I did NOT let it reinstall my mods for me, since it kept trying to install old versions and stuff that I'd uninstalled to make room for mods I wanted more.) I then pulled up a copy of my old Plugins.txt file, and reinstalled what I actually wanted using that as a guide. Since my mod list is right up at the limit, this was (and still is, since I found a few new mods I want more) a long process--a few days so far, since I'm having to re-evaluate my whole list, but if you don't have too many mods, and know for sure which ones you want, it might only take a few minutes. As I worked on the NMM stuff, every time I reinstalled a half dozen or so mods, I started up FO4 to make sure nothing was broken yet. I got in this habit because when I first reinstalled everything (which was accidentally over the limit of esps/esms, since I had both NMM versions and Bethesda.net versions of some things) I had a CTD. By doing it bit by bit then checking, I have a much better chance of diagnosing which mod might cause that. It also helps to try to open up one of your old saves, because you'll get a warning dialogue showing you a partial list of what you haven't reinstalled yet. (Unless you're sure you no longer want those mods, hit the 'No' option when that warning dialogue pops up; you don't want even an exitsave without those mods installed.) My next step will be to make one or two changes to the .ini file so that things like Creation Kit work properly (instead of copying over my old .ini file), and then to copy over the retexture files I spent a few years making and accumulating, but those steps aren't necessary if you don't do things like CK or personalized textures. So, for anyone else with this problem: Good luck, hope this helps, and expect it to take a while if you have a lot of mods!

My Windows 7 gaming machine died, but my hard drives from it and backups are still useable, and are now installed in my new machine. With these, I was assuming that it'd be no problem to reinstall FO4 via Steam, copy over all my mods, and copy over my old saved games, then just pick up right where I left off on my new (Windows 10) machine. I put everything into the same file structure it was in on the old machine and started up my new installation of FO4, but couldn't find any of my saves; the Load menu option was even inactive/greyed out. When I select the Mods menu option, and check the Load Order, all my mods are there, but NMM can't find them, even when I manually point it at the directory that holds them, and it keeps wanting to uninstall them as a result. (And if it can't find them, what does it think it's uninstalling?!) So, most urgent issues: -- FO4 can't find my saves, even though they're where they're supposed to be ( Users > [me] > Documents > My Games > Fallout4 > Saves) -- NMM (community edition, release 0.80.14) can't seem to find any of my mods, even though they're in the same place in the folder structure that NMM put them on my old machine (H: > Steam > steamapps > common > Fallout 4 > Data) Potential issues: -- FO4 is now installed on a non-boot disk, and is not in Program Files -- the new machine is Windows 10 instead of Windows 7 While modding my old FO4 over the years, there were various steps (like changes to the .ini) that I did, and I'm sure I've forgotten to redo many of them. I'd thought that by just overwriting files on the new installation with the files from the old installation, all of these changes would have been transferred over, but maybe not...? Has anyone done this, and can you tell me the steps you followed? Or, can anyone point me to some guides that might cover steps that I'm not thinking of?

Wish I could help--I'm also interested in learning how to do this! Exteriors, interiors, floors, walls, everything. I've got literally decades of experience with 3D modeling, but no clue where to start with this.

Argh! I've been trying to persuade myself I can't possibly be to blame for this--I posted a bug report shortly before Snap 'n Build disappeared. (The bug was that immediately after using the missing Structures menu fix, the Structures menu reappeared but the Snap 'n Build menu was missing from it.) I'm assuming that it was taken down while the author works on bugs in general, not just my bug report... hope it comes back! I still have it installed, but I can't get to it, and I'm a bit concerned that trying other fixes (especially with it gone from Nexus) will mess things up more.