CTDs possibly caused by mod conflicts

[Demmly]

Hello everybody!

 

I could really do with some advice on why my FO3 would recently start crashing.

 

 

I should probably start with the list of my mods, here goes:

 

[X] Fallout3.esm

[X] Anchorage.esm

[X] ThePitt.esm

[X] BrokenSteel.esm

[X] PointLookout.esm

[X] Zeta.esm

[X] RI_Core.esm

[X] CALIBR.ESM

[X] HitmanSuit.esm

[X] Vault 101 Revisited.esm

[X] TheInstitute.esm

[X] Alton, IL.esm

[X] FireExtinguishers.esm

[X] DCInteriors_ComboEdition.esm

[X] FOOK2 - Main.ESM

[X] FOOK2 - [DIK] DLC Improvement Kit.ESM

[X] Enhanced Weather - Rain and Snow.esm

[X] [DC RANGER ARSENAL v3 MASTER].esm

[X] RTS NW.esm

[X] Project Beauty.esm

[X] CASM.esp

[X] CONELRAD 640-1240.esp

[X] blanket.esp

[X] Existence2.0.esp

[X] Bicurious.esp

[X] RZW_SimpleGrab.esp

[X] Rude Awakening.esp

[X] Groovy Followers.esp

[X] QuantumPipeV2.esp

[X] 01AtM - Firefly Ranch.esp

[X] RZW_RadioStutterFix.esp

[X] shopping-spree.esp

[X] Water_Tower_Hideout_byOrophin.esp

[X] MTC Wasteland Travellers.esp

[X] MTC Wasteland Travellers (Optional)- Crowded Cities less NPCs.esp

[X] FOOK2 - Main.esp

[X] FOOK2 Main [Hotfix].esp

[X] FOOK2 - [DIK] DLC Improvement Kit.esp

[X] FOOK2 DIK [Hotfix].esp

[X] Zap-Away.esp

[X] UndergroundHideout.esp

[X] RI_Base3.esp

[X] RI_FOSE.esp

[X] RI_DoctorCost.esp

[X] RI_CrippledEffects.esp

[X] RI_PNeeds2S.esp

[X] RiPnO CorePatch.esp

[X] RiPnO 5 DLC Merged.esp

[X] BLTC.esp

[X] BLTC Immersion Patch.esp

[X] BLTC Hypo Fix.esp

[X] BLTC & FOOK2 1.1 Beta 2 CP.esp

[X] Ultra Olney.esp

[X] Deadly Deathclaw's.esp

[X] Unique Dogmeat.esp

[X] CP - RiPnO [bLTC032+FOOK211b2+DIK].esp

[X] Lt Williams Companion.esp

[X] Evil Moriarty 1.4.esp

[X] Mystyk's Followers.esp

[X] FreePumpkin.esp

[X] teddybear_brothers.esp

[X] BabyDeathclawCommander.esp

[X] Boat House.esp

[X] Enhanced Weather - Rain and Snow in Fallout.esp

[X] Enhanced Weather - Radioactive Rain and Snow Plugin.esp

[X] Enhanced Weather - Weather Sounds in Interiors.esp

[X] Enhanced Weather - Sneak Bonus during Storms.esp

[X] Game_WastelandTravel.esp

[X] Game_VertibirdTravel.esp

[X] MinefieldTwoThousand.esp

[X] MisterBurkeCompanion.esp

[X] MisterBurkeCompanionFix.esp

[X] UrgeScarfFallout3.esp

[X] MercMashup.esp

[X] FruitTrees.esp

[X] Camper Hill.esp

[X] AHomeCalledGrease.esp

[X] JohnnyAppleseed.esp

[X] StashAway.esp

[X] deadly animals vanilla ghouls.esp

[X] StrongerFeralGhoul.esp

[X] Overrun Station.esp

[X] The Groovatron.esp

[X] The Groovatron_DLC_Anch_Addon.esp

[X] The Groovatron_DLC_Pitt_Addon.esp

[X] The Groovatron_DLC_PL_Addon.esp

[X] CreaturePoses.esp

[X] NotSoFast.esp

[X] FireExtinguishers_DLC.esp

[X] DCInt_FireExtinguishers.esp

[X] LeatherBackpack - eng.esp

[X] Dragonskin Tactical Outfit.esp

[X] GhostCombatHelm.esp

[X] BusworldV1.05d.esp

[X] Wasteland Soldier Armor.esp

[X] RTS NW - Volume 1st.esp

[X] RTS NW - Volume 2nd.esp

[X] RTS NW - Volume 3rd.esp

[X] RTS NW - Volume 4 Stone.esp

[X] Tailor Maid.esp

[X] Tailor Maid Anchorage.esp

[X] Tailor Maid Black Retex.esp

[X] Tailor Maid PITT.esp

[X] Sprint Mod.esp

[X] Project Beauty- Broken Steel.esp

[X] Project Beauty- Point Lookout.esp

[X] FOOK2 - Project Beauty.esp

[X] FOOK - DIK - Project Beauty.esp

[X] Pylon Home.esp

[X] VC Black Stormchaser Hat 1_2.esp

[X] Fortify Bus Shelters.esp

[X] Zan_AutoPurge_SmartAgro.esp

Now, it looks horrible, but at least I know for a fact what /doesn't/ cause crashes, that would be a combination of FOOK, Real Injuries, BLTC, Enhanced Weather and Project Beauty.

My suspicion is, it all went to hell after I installed UCO - Urban Combat Overhaul (and don't get me wrong i /love/ the mod, it's great, and it's definitely my own stupidity that broke the game).

Everything worked fine in DC area, however starting with Super Duper Mart and all the way to Rivet City the game would crash sporadically.

Now at that point UCO was conflicting with Water Tower Hideout and generally strained the game, so I removed it. However the crashes didn't stop.

I believe a combination of MTC Wasteland Travellers & Real Time Settlers might causeCTDs, however disabling the mods didn't fix anything so I'm clueless here.

And again, everything works alright in DC area.

FO3 MasterUpdate doesn't show any conflicts as well, so this is all rather mysterious..

Any suggestions what might have gone wrong?

I would really appreciate any help! Thank you!

Edited September 19, 2013 by Demmly

[M48A5]

Just to be sure, I re-read the FO3Edit Manual regarding FO3MasterUpdate. Nowhere does it state that you can use Master Update to check for conflicts. For that, you would run FO3Edit and use a conflict filter. With the list of mods you have, you will have conflicts. That is the nature of mods. However, not all conflicts are bad or will cause a CTD.

 

My suggestion would be to make a numbered save and exit the game. Disable all your mods, then enable them one at a time, checking in game until the problem occurs. The last mod enabled is the one causing the problem.

[Demmly]

Hey there, thanks for your answer!

 

First of all, yes, you are correct, MasterUpdate does not check for conflicts; however I use it to check if my load order is screwed up or not , and that's what I meant by "no conflicts" in the original post. And yes indeed, FO3Edit does show a lot of conflicts, yet they don't look like they should be crashing anything.

 

I tried a few solutions yesterday, and here's what seemed to have caused the problem (can't be sure since I haven't tested extensively yet): I believe MTC Wasteland Travellers was the issue. It was rather weird actually, because after I unchecked it in Mod Manager (unchecked, not deleted), the game started to crash on 'Continue' (I don't use autosaves and run CASM instead), yet it stopped the sporadic crashing. And crashes on 'Continue' got fixed by deleting the mod completely, including the backups, and saving in an interior.

 

Again, I didn't manage to test extensively so far but I hope the issue got resolved; after I make sure that there are no CTDs any more, I'll try installing UCO back, which will probably break everything again but at least I'll know what the problem is.

 

Thank you for your help!

[Demmly]

As it turns out, the issue with CTDs persists.

 

I made sure I checked the mods for conflicts with Fo3Edit, cleaned the plugins and created a Merged Patch. I also doublechecked if I had performed all the necessary changes to Fallout.ini (the quad core fix).

 

On the bright side, the crashes stopped being unpredictable: now the game occasionally crashes on entering new locations, which leads me to believe there might be something wrong with my autosaving. Which is weird, since I've been using CASM since forever and the crashes started just recently.

[Purr4me]

clear out the old saved games, make room, CASM check the folders size ,amount of saved games, then it starts to delete them when you go over the limit. fallout 3 has a memory leak, this leak cause s the saved games to react on one another, pull data in from earlier saves into the current game. the leak causes this, there is no cure but to clean that section , reboot, and hope for the best. I set CASM at 50, 1 minutes intervals.

 

back up my saved games for later to inspect mods.do the same. Question. did any mods you installed recently change any ini files? or add in an additional xml menu? find out.

 

kitty.

[Demmly]

Thank you for the suggestion!

 

 

Not all that long ago I set CASM to autosave every 3 minutes or so and I have a suspicion it caused save corruption when I was installing/uninstalling mods, so I manually saved in an interior and deleted all the previous saves.

 

Moreover I realized that my .oga wasn't associated with a media player, which leaves me wondering how on earth my fallout managed not to CTD non-stop before.

 

 

With the new autosave save interval and .oga association the game seems to have stabilized, yet once again extensive stress testing is still to be undergone.