infinite loading screen, main menu

[Avengersrule2002]

Hey all, i have spent the last year or so gaining knowledge on modding for skyrim se, i have a high end computer set up in as many ways as i can to make it work, i only use the computer for skyrim. i have had multiple playthroughs with 450 plugins mods, 550 plugins mods and even 710 mods, all has been well with just occasional small workaround issues, the most recent playthrough was 543 mods and 710 plugins, i was 6 days in, timescale 8 and i decided i wanted to start over a playthrough and add some things, in doing this i removed a couple of small ones to make plugin room like craftable torches and throwing weapons(mods without dependencies or ties), i did add a bunch of dar animations and got my plug in total up to 722 with some other mods, after fixing the load order i gave it a run, infinite loading screen at main menu page, so i ended up disabling all mods except the unofficial patch just to see if i got the problem, no it loaded fine, so now im searching for the culprit, i started with about 25 mods at a time, start up each time was fine, i got to around 500 and i added skyland, and about 5 ami mods (raikou coco etc,,) these were all new ones the i tried to integrate, infinite loading screen, after going back and forth with these i couldnt find any to be the breaker for sure, so ive went back, started again with just the patch, loaded fine, disabled all new mods i put in that point, with the plugin list now at 700, mod list 529, im getting the same infinite loading screen, even though i have what i had before, minus a little bit, ive followed instructions on memory allocation, updated all drivers, resintalled skyrim, nothing is getting me by it, im frustrated because this is less then i had before(and same mods) and it was running fine, ive spent about 5 days on it now and i want to keep what i have, if you got knowledge on it i am all ears....I use mo2, loot, i clean the dirties, i take my time to make sure things are right as can be, i use only se (downgrade patch for ae)

[ChadChadborn]

I'm having this same issue with my game, roughly 700 mods enabled and everything is a fresh installation from scratch. The game boots up to the main menu just fine, but selecting "New Game" gets rid of all menu text as though it were loading and stays that way for minutes on end with no sign of ever actually loading.

 

I went through each category on Vortex disabling all mods in a given category and loading it up in an attempt to narrow down the single offending mod, but even disabling entire categories never resolved the issue enough to load past the menu. I've tried simply disabling huge batches of mods in an effort to just load in to the world, but all that has succeeded in doing is causing my game to crash before even reaching the main menu. There was one instance in which I was able to load a new game with only about 10 mods enabled, but in that state it was so minimally functional that it was unplayable due to the large amount of dependent mods missing.

 

My system can surely handle running this no matter how I have it set up, so if anyone has any ideas of how to fix this without starting over from scratch I'd greatly appreciate it.

Edited August 12, 2023 by ChadChadborn

[7531Leonidas]

How many non-light plugins are you running? Check the 'active' stat at the top of your plugins page in Vortex.

 

I assume you are running skse-based mods, so be sure to check the skse logs in your ...Documents\My Games\Skyrim Special Edition folder, so you can see if one or more of those are not starting properly. Also, there are some .ini/.json\.log files in your Data\SKSE folder that you might look at, just to be sure.

[ChadChadborn]

How many non-light plugins are you running? Check the 'active' stat at the top of your plugins page in Vortex.

 

I assume you are running skse-based mods, so be sure to check the skse logs in your ...Documents\My Games\Skyrim Special Edition folder, so you can see if one or more of those are not starting properly. Also, there are some .ini/.json\.log files in your Data\SKSE folder that you might look at, just to be sure.

Non-light plugins number to 206.

 

I checked the log files in both folders you mentioned, a couple of the mods I have from powerofthree seem to have some issues, but they still manage to process to the end and don't result in any sort of a loop or yield any error that should cause the game to lock up. On the off chance that it was simply taking that long to load everything I selected a new game and let it sit for just over an hour, yet again the actual loading screen never showed up, only the main menu devoid of all options. I tried disabling some of the mods that gave unusual or negative results with their logs, but that didn't solve the issue either.

[7531Leonidas]

Well, that was my 'best' shot, but there was also a recent post about a too-small Windows swapfile causing a CTD. If I recall correctly, the author had severely limited the size, thinking it was ok because of their amount of installed RAM. Check the size of your swapfile, make sure it is more than just 2-4 GB. Depending on your installed RAM and disk space, maybe even try for 24 GB or so...

 

Have you tried using the profiles feature to make your mod swapping a bit faster? That way, you could 'freeze' your original install, and disable/enable mods in the new profile. Just don't install/uninstall mods, as that can cause them to be removed from the staging folder, and break your older profile, I think. I haven't tried profiles much, I misunderstood how they work, and messed stuff up early on.

 

You have verified your game files, right? (Assuming you are not 'downgrading' - if you are, it is real easy to get the wrong version of SKSE mods and cause problems.)

[ChadChadborn]

Well, that was my 'best' shot, but there was also a recent post about a too-small Windows swapfile causing a CTD. If I recall correctly, the author had severely limited the size, thinking it was ok because of their amount of installed RAM. Check the size of your swapfile, make sure it is more than just 2-4 GB. Depending on your installed RAM and disk space, maybe even try for 24 GB or so...

 

Have you tried using the profiles feature to make your mod swapping a bit faster? That way, you could 'freeze' your original install, and disable/enable mods in the new profile. Just don't install/uninstall mods, as that can cause them to be removed from the staging folder, and break your older profile, I think. I haven't tried profiles much, I misunderstood how they work, and messed stuff up early on.

 

You have verified your game files, right? (Assuming you are not 'downgrading' - if you are, it is real easy to get the wrong version of SKSE mods and cause problems.)

I'm unable to open swapfile.sys since apparently it's constantly being used by the system while running, I already have profiles set up and everything so I could do this the long and tedious way around, but I'm hoping to possibly find an easier fix if one exists. I have verified my game files and then downgraded them afterwards, I've also been very careful to install the SE versions of mods rather than the AE versions.

 

One thing that I noticed and completely forgot about until now, I've been getting an error from Vortex saying -"EngineFixes.dll" ((Part 1) SSE Engine Fixes for 1.5.39-1.5.97): dependent dll not found (code 126), but whenever I install SSE Engine Fixes Part 2 (following the instructions and installing manually of course) instead of fixing anything it simply causes my game to crash as soon as the Bethesda logo appears. I already have a fresh and full installation of Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable, and at least without Part 2 the game will start up to the menu, but I can't help but feel that there is something I'm missing in all of this.

[7531Leonidas]

Maybe you should go to the downgrader page, and post the error message there - might be something with a specific quirk with the downgraded versions, like a fix file (or anything else). For the Engine Fixes, you might be in some sort of catch-22 situation, where Vortex expects the latest dll, but you need the dll for 1.5.97?

 

Changing the pagefile size - if you are on W10, hit the windows key, click on Settings, then open System, then About. Once there, select 'Advanced system settings'.

 

You should be on the 'Advanced' tab of the system properties dialog, click on the settings of the 'Performance' item. Once there, again select the 'Advanced' tab, where you can change your paging file size under the 'Virtual memory' dialog.

 

Hopefully a similar scavenger hunt will do the same thing under W11...

 

Looked at the mod comments thread for Engine Fixes, code 126, and it says 'if you think you have it (C++ Redist) installed, think again' - did you make sure that you grabbed the x64 version, and not the ARM64 version by mistake? I did that in the past, the MS d/l page is easy to misread...

[ChadChadborn]

Maybe you should go to the downgrader page, and post the error message there - might be something with a specific quirk with the downgraded versions, like a fix file (or anything else). For the Engine Fixes, you might be in some sort of catch-22 situation, where Vortex expects the latest dll, but you need the dll for 1.5.97?

 

Changing the pagefile size - if you are on W10, hit the windows key, click on Settings, then open System, then About. Once there, select 'Advanced system settings'.

 

You should be on the 'Advanced' tab of the system properties dialog, click on the settings of the 'Performance' item. Once there, again select the 'Advanced' tab, where you can change your paging file size under the 'Virtual memory' dialog.

 

Hopefully a similar scavenger hunt will do the same thing under W11...

 

Looked at the mod comments thread for Engine Fixes, code 126, and it says 'if you think you have it (C++ Redist) installed, think again' - did you make sure that you grabbed the x64 version, and not the ARM64 version by mistake? I did that in the past, the MS d/l page is easy to misread...

I'll keep searching for sure, I'd rather not redo all of this from scratch if I don't absolutely have to.

 

I am running Windows 10 currently, so I was able to find it through your instructions, the size is set to just under 9 GB so I wouldn't imagine that it would be causing any issues. As far as C++ Redist goes I double checked my installation and even re-downloaded and installed the x64 version just to make sure, unfortunately yielding no success. Thank you for all your assistance thus far, hopefully there is some sort of solution to this and it's not an irreparable error.

[7531Leonidas]

Something that I had to do with my Engine Fixes.toml (.ini of latest version) - there was some sort of option to make sure that tbbmalloc, the Engine Fixes memory allocator, was enabled. I had to create that line under the [Experimental] section, even though I thought that it was there before, just had to set to = true.

 

If you want to try, put this "UseTBBMalloc = true" under the Experimental section. While you are at it, make sure that "MaxStdio = 8192" (the maximum) under the [Patches] section. Maybe check the defaults for the entire .toml on the Engine Fixes page? That .toml is in your ...\Data\SKSE\Plugins folder.

 

BTW - when removing mods, check out the 'Remove Related' command - check the Vortex information - supposedly removes/uninstalls dependent mods at the same? time as the parent mod. I haven't used it yet, but it might help you bug check w/o crashes from missing dependencies.

[ChadChadborn]

Something that I had to do with my Engine Fixes.toml (.ini of latest version) - there was some sort of option to make sure that tbbmalloc, the Engine Fixes memory allocator, was enabled. I had to create that line under the [Experimental] section, even though I thought that it was there before, just had to set to = true.

 

If you want to try, put this "UseTBBMalloc = true" under the Experimental section. While you are at it, make sure that "MaxStdio = 8192" (the maximum) under the [Patches] section. Maybe check the defaults for the entire .toml on the Engine Fixes page? That .toml is in your ...\Data\SKSE\Plugins folder.

 

BTW - when removing mods, check out the 'Remove Related' command - check the Vortex information - supposedly removes/uninstalls dependent mods at the same? time as the parent mod. I haven't used it yet, but it might help you bug check w/o crashes from missing dependencies.

I checked and you were correct that the UseTBBMalloc line is not present by default, I added it manually and also set the MaxStdio to 8192. However, once I actually add the tbbmalloc.dll file to my game it continues to cause instant crashes, the other two files of Engine Fixes Part 2 can remain in the game files without issue, but the tbbmalloc.dll persistently kills the game as soon as the Bethesda logo first appears.

 

Thank you for the information regarding the 'Remove Related' feature, I wasn't aware of it and I'm certain that it will be helpful in the future in any case.