Now the wife is having a major startup CTD problem

[CaptainPatch]

Hello again, folks. For those familiar with my other "Halp me!" threads, _for me_ things have worked out well. My wife, otoh, originally had a more or less semi-stable installation with @60 mods. But the CTDs started to become more frequent, so she turned off several mods in NMM. What happened then was that upon starting the game with SKSE_loader.exe, it gets as far as the audio "Boom, boom-boom" and then does a CTD. I've been given to understand that this is usually because there is a missing .esm or .esp from the Load order. The Papyrus log of this aborted startup is:

 

[06/30/2013 - 12:36:50PM] Papyrus log opened (PC)

[06/30/2013 - 12:36:50PM] Update budget: 1.200000ms (Extra tasklet budget: 1.200000ms, Load screen budget: 500.000000ms)

[06/30/2013 - 12:36:50PM] Memory page: 128 (min) 512 (max) 76800 (max total)

I added the ClearInvalidRegistrations line to the Skyrim.ini General section to try to clear out some of the orphan files, but I'm not getting past the aborted startup.

Her remaining mod mix after some known problem mods were uninstalled is

GameMode=Skyrim

Skyrim.esm=1

Update.esm=1

Dawnguard.esm=1

HearthFires.esm=1

Dragonborn.esm=1

SPIKE.esm=1

Warehouse.esm=1

XFLMain.esm=1

Unofficial Skyrim Patch.esp=1

Unofficial Dawnguard Patch.esp=1

Unofficial Hearthfire Patch.esp=1

Unofficial Dragonborn Patch.esp=1

fantasy music overhaul.esp=1

fantasy music overhaul - no vanilla music.esp=1

fantasy music overhaul - unique town music.esp=1

TradeBarter.esp=1

Chesko_WearableLantern.esp=1

Tytanis.esp=1

Convenient Horses.esp=1

Footprints.esp=1

SkyUI.esp=1

hothtrooper44_ArmorCompilation.esp=1

Dr_Bandolier.esp=1

IA6npc01.esp=1

bhabhilon.esp=1

buildablehouse.esp=1

Dragon Falls Manor.esp=1

ElysiumEstate.esp=1

HallsOfDovahndor.esp=1

hideout - hearthfires.esp=1

RiversideLodge.esp=1

Run For Your Lives.esp=1

TheFrontier.esp=1

Wyrmstooth.esp=1

Headbomb's Better Sorting - Ammo.esp=1

Headbomb's Better Sorting - Books.esp=1

Headbomb's Better Sorting - Food (Weightless).esp=1

Headbomb's Better Sorting - Ingredients.esp=1

Headbomb's Better Sorting - Miscellaneous.esp=1

Headbomb's Better Sorting - Potions (Weightless).esp=1

Headbomb's Better Sorting - Soul Gems (Ranked).esp=1

Headbomb's Better Sorting - Spells.esp=1

Guard Dialogue Overhaul.esp=1

Immersive Weapons.esp=1

Helgen Reborn.esp=1

EnhancedLightsandFX.esp=1

ELFX - Moonpath.esp=1

DeadlySpellImpacts.esp=1

XFLDialogue.esp=1

XFLPlugins.esp=1

specializedfollowers.esp=1

EMCompViljaSkyrim.esp=1

Alternate Start - Live Another Life.esp=1

Bashed Patch, 0.esp=1

 

I'm thinking that some mod needs to be put back _in_ to get past the startup CTD.

[TonyTitan]

Open up WyreBash and navigate to the Saves tab at the top. Then select the save game that you want to play. Over in the right hand window will display all of the mods that particular save game was created with and where in your load order they were located.....Even if you no longer have those mods installed.

 

But it's a great way to find mods that you might have had in earlier saves.

[ripple]

Wrye Bash will show you which mod plugins are no longer active in a save game, but it won't tell which one of them is missing a master. The quickest way is to load all the active plugins in TE5Edit and see if one of them halts the loading and bounces a missing master error message.

[TonyTitan]

Oh cool....Lesson learned for me then! :biggrin:

[CaptainPatch]

The quickest way is to load all the active plugins in TE5Edit and see if one of them halts the loading and bounces a missing master error message.

What is that Error message going to look like? The TES5Edit load up showed six lines reading

1) starting session

2) using Skyrim data path _________

3) using .ini ______

4) using settings _________

5) using Active plugin list at _________

6) found BOSS load order list at __________

 

There's no further messages on the load up. Does this mean that the CTD is NOT because any missing critical file?

Edited July 1, 2013 by CaptainPatch

[ripple]

Those six lines are the beginning of the loadup. If you finished loading all the plugins, there should be a huge block of messages ending with 'finished.' If there is no 'finished', then TES5Edit did not finish loading all the plugins, and the last error message will indicate the cause.

 

She probably should not have disabled the plugins and continued to play. It's a bad idea to do that because of papyrus scripting. Does she have a save game she can go back to before she did that? It will be easier to troubleshoot the CTD from that save game.

[CaptainPatch]

The problem now is that her game simply won't _start_. The CTD occurs long before there is the option to Load. That means that we have to debug enough to at least make it to the Main Menu.

 

So, CTD occurs just as the Boss load order is accessed. Does that suggest that the disconnect occurs with BOSS load item #1?

[ripple]

The first plugin that is loaded is the Skyrim.esm. That can't cause CTD at the loading screen because it isn't dependent on any other plugin. But if you can't even load that plugin, there's probably something seriously wrong with the game installation. Try verifying game files with Steam.

[CaptainPatch]

Well, six files failed to validate. That's the most I've ever seen at one time; my validations generally only have 1 that fails.

 

Trying to start after the validation correction still had the immediate CTD.

 

Sooooooooooooo, if everything is fine, does TES5Edit render an "OK" line in the progress report? As in

1) Skyrim.esm is OK

2) Update.esm is OK

3) Dawnguard.esm is OK

.... etc.

 

If so, having the sequence drop out before Skyrim.esm is.... troubling, to say the least.

 

Hmm. "Found BOSS load order list C:\User\Owner\AppData\Local\Skyrim\loadorder.txt" Any chance that that's the problem? As in, the file is empty, or that it is _supposed_ to be **there**, but it isn't? (I am at a loss as to how it _was_ there, but no longer isn't totally eludes me. Looking.... No it's there alright, and it is an exact match. Butttttttttttt

 

Found a couple of .esp files that no longer had a corresponding .esm. There was a Warning concerning the Dovakin's Hideout, so it was yanked -- but there was a Hideout Compatibility Patch still in place. Yanking the patch didn't stop the CTDs though. But there was also an ELFX patch for Moonpath to Elsweyr, which had also been yanked. The odd thing is that the Moonpath patch is/was an integral part of the ELFX general mod. The ONLY way to get rid of the Moonpath patch was to yank the general ELFX mod entirely.

 

I'll have to make a note of that interaction if I ever want to bring Moonpath back. (Which, aside from this irritation, Moonpath is a damn good Quest mod.)

[ripple]

The keyword is 'Finished', so if TES5Edit does not display that word in the message tab after you have give it time to load all the plugins, then the last plugin that causes TES5Edit to fail to load all the plugins is the culprit (by the way, did you update to the recently released version of TES5Edit?).

 

Moonpath should only be installed when you want to play the quest, and then uninstalled after you have finished it. Do not let it sit in your load order indefinitely.

 

The base ELFX mod is not dependent on Moonpath, but when you install the FOMOD version of the mod, and select any of ELFX's optional plugins, the only way to uninstall the optional plugins other than deleting them manually (not recommended) is to uninstall the entire mod via NMM, then reinstall it again without selecting the optional plugins. It's not a big deal, won't cause any issues (as long as you run BOSS afterwards to reset the load order).

 

What happens when you run BOSS, does it output a log?