Vortex keeps purging when I download and install a mod

[Echo389]

I haven't had any issues with it, but I have noticed earlier last week that vortex would purge mods before redeploying them so I decided to check the forums about it, gotta say while I am thankful there is some help happening I am kinda disappointed the mods and devs tried to sweep it under the rug. I hope there's a swift fixup soon and everyone's happy

[KaelynZ]

Just want to note that I am also having the purge-on-anything problem in Fallout 4, even in cases where *nothing* could have changed in the deployment - such as downloading (but not installing or enabling) a new mod, changing collection membership, and installing but not enabling a new mod.  (And yes, I have the 'Deploy Mods when Enabled', 'Install Mods when downloaded', and 'Enable Mods When Installed' options OFF).  I could understand if Vortex wanted to purge every time I enabled or disabled something (I have a HUGE modlist, with 1479 enabled and 9700 downloaded but uninstalled) , but it shouldn't be purging when I'm doing things that cannot change deployment.   However, what I would prefer is that it not purge *at all* until I hit either the 'Purge' or 'Deploy' buttons.   This is a pretty big issue for me - it's purging every time I download something, and constantly re-purging when I update a collection - and almost enough to send me back to MO2.   Should I still send logs and Vortex state to Insomnious at this point?

[TennesseeTuxedo]

I just sent insomnious my logs. 

I upgraded Vortex and Starfield a couple days ago to start experiencing this.  It seems like any activity choice made will trigger the long purge.  Enabling, disabling, uninstalling all start a purge.  From the logs, it's ~5-7 minutes (6.5 minutes in the below example) to complete.  It seems like I can install mods and do other activities while it is doing the purge, seemingly without causing problems. 

In case it happens to anyone else, the first time it occurred I thought the purge was stuck so I killed Vortex.  Since it was a purge, or in mid purge, all of my mod files had been deleted from the game folders.  When I reloaded Vortex and ran deploy, it scarily asks if you want to keep your changes (delete the file), meaning it will assume the deleted mod content in the game folders is the new mod content you want to keep and sync that up with your mod archive, deleting ALL of your mod files and leaving you with nothing but empty folders for mods.  So don't do that if it happens to you!  Select to revert the change and keep the files.  Then deploy.

2024-06-02T19:36:21.623Z [DEBUG] purging {"installPath":"D:\\MyFiles\\Personal\\Interests\\Games\\Starfield","dataPath":"d:\\program files (x86)\\steam\\steamapps\\common\\Starfield\\Data"}
2024-06-02T19:36:25.794Z [DEBUG] running checks {"event":"mod-installed","count":1}
2024-06-02T19:36:25.806Z [DEBUG] all checks completed {"event":"mod-installed"}
2024-06-02T19:37:48.247Z [INFO] memory usage growing fast {"usage":"648.3 MB","previous":"495.3 MB","max":"4.00 GB"}
2024-06-02T19:38:54.423Z [DEBUG] purging {"installPath":"D:\\MyFiles\\Personal\\Interests\\Games\\Starfield","dataPath":"d:\\program files (x86)\\steam\\steamapps\\common\\Starfield\\Plugins"}
2024-06-02T19:38:54.423Z [DEBUG] purging {"installPath":"D:\\MyFiles\\Personal\\Interests\\Games\\Starfield","dataPath":"d:\\program files (x86)\\steam\\steamapps\\common\\Starfield"}
2024-06-02T19:41:24.068Z [DEBUG] purging {"installPath":"D:\\MyFiles\\Personal\\Interests\\Games\\Starfield","dataPath":"d:\\program files (x86)\\steam\\steamapps\\common\\Starfield"}
2024-06-02T19:43:57.241Z [DEBUG] purging {"installPath":"D:\\MyFiles\\Personal\\Interests\\Games\\Starfield","dataPath":"d:\\program files (x86)\\steam\\steamapps\\common\\Starfield"}

 

[CommunistNinja]

This is a serious problem, especially for folks with big mod lists. In addition to all the complaints mentioned in this thread, if I, for example, too quickly enable (or disable) multiple mods by quickly pressing the disable/enable buttons before Vortex has finished doing its purging, Vortex will fail to properly handle the game's .ini files, reverting them back to vanilla (or whatever version Vortex uses), forcing me to go back through and dig up every .ini setting one-by-one, from intro music of the vanilla game to enb and physics settings.

As already stated, this is happening on both my rigs--the HTPC and the gaming PC. 

I've had some luck by creating a new profile and added a couple hundred bug-fix mods and others for testing. The purging issue didn't happen in that case, but switching back to the old profile brings back the purge issue.

I've already attached a set of log files, but there's been no fix. 

It's weird that this topic is labeled as though it has a "solution." 

This problem is destroying carefully curated mod lists that people have spent weeks putting together. It's been more than a couple weeks since this issue has been raised. 

I've been a long-time user of Vortex and I generally prefer it because I really enjoy some of the "collections" available but, if this doesn't get fixed soon, I'll have to switch over to MO2 because Vortex is proving to be so broken that it's unusable. 

[CommunistNinja]

On 5/14/2024 at 10:51 PM, blesch said:

You gotta be kidding me

This is some Looney Tunes s***.

The mod above requires about 26 other mods to be installed. I did install them. Then, you install THAT mod, and it replaces all of the .ESP files with ESP-FE so the conflicts all go away but you get the remaining assets.

Well, it's supposed to be
"26 clothing mods" ==> "dx armor mod" as shown above"

But Vortex keeps purging the clothing mods. So I re-deploy them. Then DX Armor mod, which detects which of those mods you installed and lets you select them, as I'm running the installer Vortex purges the other clothing mods after the DX mod starts installing, but BEFORE the selection menus appear, so the selections are messed up. Which forces me to stop the installation, re-install the purged mods, and then start the installation again...and then they purge again. Catch-22, infinite loop.

Please turn off all auto-purging in the next update. I just got a brand new 8TB SSD specifically for Skyrim modding, and I'd rather not see it burnt out because your app *insists* on writing several hundred extra terabytes per month that it literally doesn't need to.

So, please tell me: how do I turn off the auto-purging?

Did you ever get an answer for how to turn off this auto-purging? It's insane that it takes me like a half hour to simply enable a half-dozen mods, just sitting and waiting for Vortex purges is not the ideal way to spend my days off.

[TennesseeTuxedo]

This really cripples modding if you have a large play list.  (I'm not sure how it performs with a small number of mods)

I have to wonder why all mods have to be deleted then re-deployed, why can't it analyze file signatures and only perform the net deletes and overwrites needed?  It's using a brute force strategy that might be ok if you run 4 mods, but run a 100 and it's a long wait of purging for every single activity, large or small.  Deploy one change to a single 2kb esm and all 20GB of all your mods have to be deleted and re-copied.  Whoops, want to change it back?  Delete all 20GB of your mods again and copy them all back to change that one file.  It's a lot of excess writes on SSDs.  Heavy modders beware and maybe do the calculations to make sure we are not killing our disks.

Vortex is going in the wrong direction.  I love Vortex for FO4, for that it's the apex of mod manager experience.  (I understand all games are now potentially affected by the new mass purging regimen.)

With Starfield, Vortex was understandably rocky at first due to the changes Bethesda made, but the usability is going downhill.  With every Vortex update it seemingly takes longer and longer to work with your mods.  There are many strange situations like certain mods it simply will not deploy but says they are deployed, or the myriad of times it accuses me of "changing files outside Vortex" that I didn't touch. 

There might not be enough resource or focus to work through these since Vortex supports many games, many of which might be typically run with just a few mods.  Maybe it's not going to be ideal for a more dynamic and larger mod environment and it's being targeting toward more lightly modded games.  Maybe we have to look to another mod manager for Starfield.  I don't think there is anything as far along as Vortex but perhaps something simpler with reduced capability but that works and doesn't thrash our SSDs.

I'm very much appreciate what the Vortex team has delivered to us.  I use it for multiple games and have been very happy with it.  But it's on the verge of unbearable with Starfield.

[Zanderat]

I don't have this problem.  But, to me, it's problematic that the devs don't appear to be taking this seriously.

[insomnious]

Hi guys, sorry it's taking so long but it is a fiddly process digging through logs and states that users have supplied in order to find out if we have an unknown bug or something we've seen before or if it's specific to a users environment.

I'd ask that if you've not seen the below post, please have a read and check that the pre-deployment purging can't be solved using these conflict management methods.

As well as the above post, we are looking at ways that we can either turn off the pre-deployment purging (as the above posts mentioned, that may cause more issues as it's not fixing anything, just letting the user carry on without fixing the underlying cause). We are looking at ways to better communicate file conflicts so can get to the root cause quicker.

@TennesseeTuxedo I'm stilling looking through the files you sent me, and @CommunistNinja I'd really like to see your state if possible (I've got the logs from an earlier post). I imagine it'll be pretty big so Discord is an easy option to send the bigger files. DM me and we can run through it. I'll be amending the above post as and when we can identify things to help that aren't individual to a users setup.

Thanks

insomnious

[TennesseeTuxedo]

5 hours ago, Zanderat said:

I don't have this problem.  But, to me, it's problematic that the devs don't appear to be taking this seriously.

Hi @Zanderat, when you say you don't have the problem, are you running just a few mods?  Do you see a purging go off anytime you do something?  Seeing people say that makes me wonder if there is some configuration or something that we can do to alleviate this problem. 

[Jazzfrezi]

Just spent the last few days reinstalling everything because I thought this vortex purge thing had f'ed my build.

Not finished installign everything and it has started up again. When it goes like this, Vortex likes to insist FNIS is not installed when it is as its one of the first mods I install on a build.

Edit: This mod seems to cause holy hell with Vortex. Goes back to normal when I remove it:

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/120569