CTD Crash with no log generated

[jamesthornbury]

I'm at my wit's end. I've tried everything I can think of, and nothing works. And the worst part? The crash logger doesn't seem to work. Whatever crash I'm getting is not catchable.

 

I'm on Skyrim AE latest patch, and I'm getting intermittent crashes, usually but not always when transitioning to a new interior, with no consistency in where or when the crash happens. The log generator only generates a log very rarely: most often the crashes leave no log, and the rare few logs I have managed to get have nothing useful in them (they blame skyrim.exe or tbbmalloc.dll).

 

I'm running it all via Mod Organiser 2, and I'm using LOOT. I have an ENB installed - The Truth ENB, using the latest ENB binaries. The crash occurs even with ENB and its dependent mods disabled.

 

In case it matters, I'm using 2K textures for everything, and I'm on an nVidia GTX 1070 with 8 GB dedicated GPU memory and another 8 GB Shared GPU memory. CPU is an Intel Core i5-6600K @ 3.5 Ghz. 16 GB Memory at 2133 Mhz. The game's running from an SSD.

 

To give more detail, I can consistently trigger a crash by starting in the Banner Mare, going into Arcadia's Cauldron, going into Belethor's General Goods, going into the Companions' Hall, and then going into Dragonsreach. It will crash on one of the later ones. Not always the same one, and honestly seems to crash if I enter enough other buildings - Dragonsreach is just the most consistent trigger.

Here's the plugin load order as a text file: https://pastebin.com/2awcVJkM

 

The installation deploy order in MO2: https://pastebin.com/SP6mZ0uD

 

The last Papyrus log: https://pastebin.com/tja1s1Ue

 

 

Please help!

Edited July 26, 2023 by Pickysaurus
Soliciting help by offering payment is not permitted

[Pickysaurus]

I have removed the part of your post offering money in exchange for assistance, this is against our community rules.

[7531Leonidas]

Did you check the SKSE logs in your Documents\My Games\Skyrim Special Edition\\SKSE folder? There might be an applicable log or two in the game's Data\SKSE folder as well. Since you are in Whiterun, go to the JK's Whiterun pages, and look/ask there if anything similar has occurred to anyone there. May be a wandering NPC introduced by a mod that was corrupted upon install, or not installed correctly, as in missing prerequisite mods or resources.

 

You could also use SSEEdit (xEdit) and check your entire load order for conflicts, just looking for major stuff, not water height or object bounds differences.

[scorrp10]

IMHO, 'NPC Appearances Merged' introduces more problems than it solves. And no telling which actual NPC replacer mods you may be running. A CTD like you describe can be often caused by a wrong .tri file used for a head part.

 

These crash problems are generally a nightmare to analyze when one is right at the PC with access to all the logs, SSEEdit and everything, let alone remotely.

[anjenthedog]

But are you able to cell transition into and out of Whiterun? If so, then it might be that either a clothing item, an NPC wearing those clothes, or some static object located in those locations is giving you grief.

 

I glanced at your load list but shame on me, my eyes quickly glazed over at the prospect of analyzing your mod choices. I'm sure you're far more familiar to investigate any mods that you have chosen to install onto your game and which could be affecting interiors statics, building interiors, clothing items interior NPCs might be wearing, and or replacers or modifiers for any of those NPCs.

 

Best wishes

 

PS> having said that, a qucik scan of your papyrus log indicates (that is, all those "I Can't do that Hal!" statements about various mod resources failing to load) that something totally humped your system.

 

this sort of stuff is what I'm referring to... Seems a bit worse than a ctd on cell change

[07/26/2023 - 08:53:43AM] Cannot open store for class "sethirelingrehire3dnpc", missing file?
[07/26/2023 - 08:53:47AM] Cannot open store for class "ccBGSSSE038_AssassinEnableScript", missing file?
[07/26/2023 - 08:53:47AM] Cannot open store for class "DefaultDebugMagicEffect", missing file?
[07/26/2023 - 08:53:47AM] Cannot open store for class "ccBGSSSE067_ScourgeDremoraScript", missing file?
[07/26/2023 - 08:53:50AM] Cannot open store for class "APAddToQueue", missing file?

[scorrp10]

Speaking of that Papyrus log... try setting all weapon wear styles in XPMSE MCM to their defaults.... Do you by any chance have Mu Joint Fix installed?

[jamesthornbury]

Did you check the SKSE logs in your Documents\My Games\Skyrim Special Edition\\SKSE folder? There might be an applicable log or two in the game's Data\SKSE folder as well.

I forgot to say, but yes, I checked SKSE logs and they're all 100% good. No errors, no failures to load, nothing.

 

For looking in SSEdit, any things in particular I should look for in terms of conflicts?

 

 

IMHO, 'NPC Appearances Merged' introduces more problems than it solves. And no telling which actual NPC replacer mods you may be running. A CTD like you describe can be often caused by a wrong .tri file used for a head part.

Interesting. I'm going to sit down and examine this very carefully. And thank you for the suggestion - I know remote debugging is awful, and I deeply appreciate the support!

 

 

But are you able to cell transition into and out of Whiterun? If so, then it might be that either a clothing item, an NPC wearing those clothes, or some static object located in those locations is giving you grief.

 

Transition into and out of Whiterun is totally fine. Together with the above, I'm beginning to think it must be NPC related. Will investigate and report back.

 

Also, regarding the script logs: my understanding is that those are from mods attempting to run compatibility checks, rather than catastrophic failures.

 

Speaking of that Papyrus log... try setting all weapon wear styles in XPMSE MCM to their defaults.... Do you by any chance have Mu Joint Fix installed?

All XMPSE settings at default, I don't even use the MCM (I only have it as a prerequisite for CBBE 3BA). I'll investigate Mu Joint Fix.

 

Thank you to everyone who has volunteered suggestions so far, I deeply appreciate you all.

[jamesthornbury]

Here's the testing process:

• Alternate Start in Bannered Mare.
• Exit, loop around active NPC scenes.
• Enter Belethor's General Goods.
• Enter Arcadia's Cauldron.
• Enter Temple of Kynareth.
• Enter Companion's Hall.
• Enter Dragonsreach.

Testing results:

• Disabling all ENB - still crashing
• Disabling all animations - still crashing
• Disabling all NPC appearance mods - still crashing
• Disabling all JK's mods - crashing gone!

Do we have a culprit?

 

• Re-enabling ENB - crashing gone!
• Re-enabling all animations - crashing gone!
• Re-enabling child appearance mods - crashing gone!
• Re-enabling all JK's mods except for dragonsreach - crash in Arcadia's Cauldron.

Okay so JK's mods are either responsible for something or exposing something.

• Disabling all JK's mods except for Arcadia's Cauldron - crash in Dragonsreach.

At this point I'm thinking the problem can't be JK's Skyrim - it's got to be that it's loading assets in its interiors that are somehow causing crashes.

• Disabling all JK's mods again. Do the testing process with no crashes, then leave Whiterun, go to Honningbrew Meader, then from there visit White River Watch. Walking right back outside, heading right toward the standing stone - crash in worldspace!

And I have a crash log this time!

Raw crash log: https://pastebin.com/8kC1R9Kc

Report from Crash Log Analyser: https://pastebin.com/cvU8VwY3


So RuinsDragonStatue01.dds keeps coming up. A look in Mod Organiser 2 says it's Skyland AIO that provides this file.

• Disabling Skyland AIO - crash in worldspace at exactly the same spot. No crash log. Guess it wasn't that.
• Retry, this time making a beeline for that place - no immediate crash. Went into White River Watch, back out to same place, no crash. Waited around (as in stood there, not wait function) overlooking river, no crash. Went along to the toll road stop, down the hill on the other side - total freeze, have to kill it in task manager.

At this point I'm seriously reconsidering my life choices.

• In a last ditch effort, disabled all model and texture changes apart from Static Mesh Imprvement Mod, SMIM Quality Addon, SMIM Improvement Mod, CBBE/HIMBO/Character stuff, Mandragorasprouts' shrines and their patches, landscapes, grass and trees, and plants and flora, snow and ice, and water. No crashes, to the point I went through Whiterun, then did the interiors in reverse, then did White River Watch, then made it all the way to Windhelm on foot and hit up interiors there, then all the way to Riften on foot and hit up interiors there.

This suggests it's definitely an asset being loaded in that's causing the problem, right? Deep breath, reinstall all JK's mods.

• Repeat the above, and make it all the way to Windhelm before crashing on the bridge.
• Restart, this time in Candlehearth Hall. Head outside, no crash.Carriage travel to Whiterun then run back on foot, no crash. Enter some interiors, absolutely fine, until I enter the Palace of Kings, at which point I crash so hard the monitors flicker and go black and I have to hard power off my machine.

What was that? I dig out the windows' logs, and here's where this gets interesting: tons of warnings and then errors corresponding to the Skyrim crashes.


Warning at 7:21:13


"Windows successfully diagnosed a low virtual memory condition. The following programs consumed the most virtual memory: SkyrimSE.exe (6812) consumed 11266576384 bytes, steamwebhelper.exe (14036) consumed 419979264 bytes, and ModOrganizer.exe (2196) consumed 402673664 bytes."


Error at 7:25:32

"Faulting application name: SkyrimSE.exe, version: 1.6.640.0, time stamp: 0x63237ea6
Faulting module name: ucrtbase.dll, version: 10.0.19041.789, time stamp: 0x2bd748bf
Exception code: 0xc0000409
Fault offset: 0x000000000007286e
Faulting process ID: 0x1330
Faulting application start time: 0x01d9c052c4446ea1
Faulting application path: F:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Skyrim Special Edition\SkyrimSE.exe
Faulting module path: C:\WINDOWS\System32\ucrtbase.dll
Report ID: 82a049f8-892d-4d7d-8a24-9ee93de7b0c9
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:"


These more or less repeat until we get to an error at 9:17:05, where we get something really interesting:


"Unable to initialise the filter host process. Terminating.

Details:
The paging file is too small for this operation to complete. (HRESULT : 0x800705af) (0x800705af)"


This led me down a rabbithole of discovery. Turns out that Skyrim needs a large page file for stability? I had a 4 GB page file.

So, setting my page file to 40 GB, let's give it another shot.

 

• I went through Whiterun, then did the interiors in reverse, then did White River Watch, then made it all the way to Windhelm on foot and hit up interiors there, then all the way to Riften on foot and hit up interiors there.

 

Not just rock solid, but fast loading, with buttery smooth FPS that had only minor dips in a few areas (like JK's Whiterun Outskirts). It felt more stable than ever before.

 

I'm now seriously wondering whether the crashing has been due to the weird way Windows and Skyrim interact with the page file, putting excessive demand on it despite having enough physical resources. I'm going to re-enable all the mesh and texture mods and run some more tests. It may well be that there's some mesh errors somewhere, but I am wondering if actually the problem has been memory allocation due to page file size being too low.

 

Will report back later!

Edited July 27, 2023 by jamesthornbury

[jamesthornbury]

Yeah, it turns out it was the low page file size. Everything runs perfectly now that I've increased it. Thank you everyone.

[7531Leonidas]

Congratulations! Glad it wasn't any of your mods - I was about to suggest deleting and re-d/l the JK mods at least, in case there were incomplete/corrupted files.