Computer died--reinstalling FO4 & mods from backups?

[BasedBuilders]

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?

[BasedBuilders]

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!

Edited July 12, 2021 by exstock

[HeyYou]

NMM has some files stashed around as well, that details what mods are installed, what options you chose, etc. If it doesn't find those files, then it assumes you are a 'fresh' install. No idea where it keeps that data though.

[aurreth]

NMM has some files stashed around as well, that details what mods are installed, what options you chose, etc. If it doesn't find those files, then it assumes you are a 'fresh' install. No idea where it keeps that data though.

 

Everything gets hidden in %appdata% (C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming), which is a crappy place to put it because that directory is normally hidden from the user and makes it extremely difficult to do a clean uninstall. It's a Windows paradigm built on the idea of hiding things from the user so they can't "accidentally" delete something "important", and making programming easier because %appdata% can be referenced instead of the actual install directory. But it also results in uninstallers leaving behind a cubic buttload of old config files and caches that are hard to clean out, because "you might want to reinstall later".

[BasedBuilders]

 

But it also results in uninstallers leaving behind a cubic buttload of old config files and caches that are hard to clean out, because "you might want to reinstall later".

 

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!

[HeyYou]

 

 

But it also results in uninstallers leaving behind a cubic buttload of old config files and caches that are hard to clean out, because "you might want to reinstall later".

 

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!

 

That's why I save the archives that I download. Assures me that the mod will always be available to me. I don't use the manager to download, I grab them manually, drop them in my mods download directory, and have NMM install it from there. Works great. :D

[aurreth]

 

 

 

But it also results in uninstallers leaving behind a cubic buttload of old config files and caches that are hard to clean out, because "you might want to reinstall later".

 

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!

 

That's why I save the archives that I download. Assures me that the mod will always be available to me. I don't use the manager to download, I grab them manually, drop them in my mods download directory, and have NMM install it from there. Works great. :D

 

 

The problem with that is that NMM/Vortex copy the Download to %appdata%, then unpack it to there, then copy it to Data when you deploy. You end up with two copies of the archive, and two of the unpacked archive, which for a large texture or mesh mod can mean 10 to 20 Gig total for one mod.

 

I let Vortex handle everything, then occasionally copy the archive directory from there to my NAS.

 

This is my big complaint with programs that use %appdata% to store stuff, instead of keeping everything in the install directory where it belongs. It makes backups and migration difficult, because you have to actually know that the hidden directory exists. Wherever possible I use the "portable" version of programs, because that is what they do, keep everything in one directory.

[HeyYou]

I'm not finding anything in appdata for NMM......

 

Drive space has gotten dirt cheap. :)