need help FO4 can't load aymore

[Kalea1608]

from one day to another my save can't load anymore (Steam). The load screen appears to load and load forever.

I didn't change anything before.

Tried already:

- check saves at steam (was ok)

- delete caches

- pc, Gforce driver is up to date

- load without the last few mods

- lot's of free memory at my notebook

- start the FO loader with admin rights

 

any other ideas pls  ?  I have far over 1000 hours played  almost everything in detailed settlement building, don't want to lose my saves.
I am no expert in modding, so could be a problem in the mod order? but worked fine the last year.
Yes a totally ooold save will load. But I tried to walk 2 steps - do a new whole save and then it still won't load like above. 
 

[LarannKiar]

"Infinite loading screen" could be a result of all kinds of errors. Generally speaking, it means the game can't load something from the save and get stuck in an infinite loop.

The save loader should be able to determine whether the save file is corrupted or not but it doesn't do a perfect job..

Unfortunately, since saves are binary files, it's very difficult to restore it (almost enterely depends on luck). Try "cleaning" it with Fallrim Tools. It has some automatic "clean unattached instances of (...)" features as far as I know.

You can also try contacting the author of Fallrim Tools in a comment. In past he was known to be quite helpful with save game issues. You'll probably need to upload a save somewhere.

If nothing helps, then it's not much you can do.. you'll need to back up your important data and start a new game.. it's not worth going back to the last save that can be loaded either. Issues like this are mostly a result of "cumulated errors" unless you installed a mod recently which alone caused the corruption so there's a high chance it'll reappear later.

You may also need to revisit and sort your mods, "heavy" load orders with many scripted mods can make saves more vulnerable.

Edited March 8 by LarannKiar

[Kalea1608]

Thank you so much for the answer. didn't know about the Fallrim tool. Just tried it and cleared the scripts, but it also says something about the stack count, 134 stacks and 271 frames. don't know yet what this means, but will digg a little.

[subaverage]

One litte question. Do you use Reshade with a version higher than 5.9.2 (maybe together with Enb)? This can cause endless loading screens, too. Other than that I fear your saves can be long corrupted and you could lose your progess.

[Kalea1608]

no reshade mod, but others like vivid Fallout and some HD textures. 

I have another idea. Maybe I could just transfer the settlements with the transfer mod from the old save, then start a new game and import only the settlements I could transfer from the old save? Or would this bring the problems in again? 

[subaverage]

51 minutes ago, Kalea1608 said:

no reshade mod, but others like vivid Fallout and some HD textures. 

I have another idea. Maybe I could just transfer the settlements with the transfer mod from the old save, then start a new game and import only the settlements I could transfer from the old save? Or would this bring the problems in again? 

I did the same once and it is a good way to save your settlements as long as these are not the reason for the endless loading screen. But your problem might return as long as you don't know what caused it. Maybe be you uninstalled one or more scipted mods in the past. The scripts might still be baked into your savegames. In this case a new start should work. (Please be aware of the fact that there exist mods that must not be loaded before you leave Vault111 the first time.) Another reason for an endless loading screen can be that one or more mods add too much to a leveled list. Afaik these lists must not have more than 255 entries. Otherwise the savegame won't load. The more mods you have the more difficult it is to find the reason. 

[LarannKiar]

8 hours ago, Kalea1608 said:

no reshade mod, but others like vivid Fallout and some HD textures. 

I have another idea. Maybe I could just transfer the settlements with the transfer mod from the old save, then start a new game and import only the settlements I could transfer from the old save? Or would this bring the problems in again? 

Unlikely the issue would return but it's hard to tell.

You mentioned the playthrough has >1000 hours which could mean it's not even caused by "one particular mod". I mean, unfortunately, the developer BGS has never taken this matter seriously. Even during normal operation, the game marks more and more data to be saved, without cleaning all unecessary data. This is a "rather save everything then miss anything" design { (save everything > miss anything) == (infinite load screen on older saves > more frequent crashes any saves) }. Sadly they didn't change their perspective in Starfield either (which uses their most recent code).

[Kalea1608]

Ok thank you you two. I think I'll have to look at each mod.

It is actually 1800 hours. It is known if the game has some kind of limit? Like a limit how many objects can be build? I fear that I have just to much settlements and altered a lot of locations with workshops.

[LarannKiar]

2^21 (2097152) is the reference limit but there are many other limits as well. What exactly counts toward the reference limit depends on the mod's plugin type too. (The engine treats differently ESP and ESM mods). References are stored in hashmaps in save games by the way but even one single broken reference data could cause corruption. Leveled Lists' "Leveled Object count" which is 255 was mentioned above. (I haven't tested it for infinite load screens personally but the count is indeed an int8_t value and INT8_MAX is 255). 

Edited March 11 by LarannKiar

[Infamous95]

1000 hours is alot for a game. Id say save bloat probably killed it.