CTDs ? Maybe This Will Help - Steps to Diagnose Skyrim Issues

[NiteBeast]

Hello Community,

 

As those who read the forums regularly know, there are a lot of topics involving CTDs and quite a bit of those threads are essentially dealing with the same processes to get to a resolution. So I figured I'd try to write something up to help others get past their CTDs, ILSs and other issues. To have all the suggestions I know in one place.

 

This post is aimed primarily at users who are not familiar with the ins and outs of optimizing Skyrim and are having lots of issues with crashes to desktop (CTD) and infinite loading screens (ILS). Advanced users likely won't find much benefit here but the info is of course here for everyone regardless.

 

So without further ado...

 

 

1. Needed Software

 

There are some very important tools that you MUST have to achieve a stable Skyrim with many mods. Here's what you'll need to go through the processes in this post:

 

WryeBash

TES5Edit

LOOT

Skyrim Performance Monitor

 

I am not making any assumptions to what mods you choose to run but I would highly recommend the following be included. Use the DLC patches where applicable:

 

SKSE

SafetyLoad

Unofficial Skyrim Patch

Unofficial Dragonborn Patch

Unofficial Dawnguard Patch

Unofficial Hearthfire Patch

Unofficial HiRes Texture Patch

 

 

2. Important Considerations

 

A stable Skyrim with mods is a thing of beauty. I truly believe that with the correct mods you can have a very stable game and the hundreds of hours of game play that can come from it. I routinely have multiple hour sessions without crashes and only the odd CTD... which brings me to my next point. You will CTD from time to time no matter what, that's just the nature of using a heavily modded game like Skyrim can be. Here's the ugly truth though, if you want as stable a game as possible you have to spend the time to make it so, and it can be a quite the investment. Installing a whack of mods then jumping into game may get you playing but more often than not you'll soon start seeing major problems.

 

One thing I recommend is getting your setup done before starting a new game, and don't mess with mods very often once you've got a game under-way, otherwise you may find yourself midway through Skyrim and dealing with broken or bloated saves and more regular crashes. Never remove mods from an active game unless you know what you are doing and whenever possible always start a new game when adding game changing mods.

 

On top of that I also recommend being very selective in what mods you choose. Take the time to read the descriptions, look for known conflicts, etc. It will save you many headaches long term. For instance, activating a lot of script heavy mods can make your game crawl, cause quests not to work right because papyrus (the game scripting engine) can't keep up with the demand.

 

So assuming you've got the mods you want ready let's get started.

 

 

3. Mod Install Order - (Not The Load Order)

 

You have two options here, you can go through something like STEP or you can choose to wing it, I like to wing it myself but there's some excellent advice given in the STEP Project so I recommend having a read through. Most notably is the order you should install mods, especially any that are script heavy or really change how the vanilla game works.

 

I personally install all my game changing mods first, these are your Hunterborn, Frostfall, iNeed, etc. type mods. Then I move to the texture mods. I also try to select my mods in a way that I'm not overwriting one mod's files with another mod's files, especially scripts. You'll avoid issues doing it that way unless you're comfortable or know for sure what you are replacing. By doing the game changing mods first you can also jump into Skyrim and verify they are working correctly long before you start activating the dozens of textures most people enable. You can make sure its stable then build on that, this is similar to what the STEP Project aims to achieve.

 

 

4. Load Order Sorting With LOOT

 

The load order in Skyrim is very important, you must sort your load order!. So important that if you do use mods and don't sort them you're pretty much just wasting time. The more mods you add without sorting the quicker you'll run into serious problems. So we use programs like LOOT (and Boss before it!) to make sure our load orders are correct, or as good as an automated tool can muster.

 

Skyrim works by allowing one mod to change another mod's properties simply by referencing them in the Creation Kit. This allows a mod to not need those references assets copied into it, instead the mod assumes the referenced one will be available and loaded when it gets loaded. That creates a secondary load order for each mod, don't worry about it for right now, we'll handle it with WryeBash later. We're going to focus on the overall load order of the active mods. Please note that a missing referenced file will cause a CTD every time and we'll use TES5Edit to verify that we don't have anything missing in a bit.

 

For now though, there's not a lot to go over with LOOT, the default actions are usually just fine so go ahead and run it when you've got mods installed and activated. Run LOOT then click the 'Sort Plugins' button and after a moment it will prompt for you to review and apply the purposed changes. Most of the time you can just click Apply then go to the summary report.

 

Once you're in the summary report it is vital that you scroll through and check the notes for each mod. In particular we're looking for any mention of a mod needing to be cleaned. Any mod that shows those messages should be cleaned and we'll look at how that's done next section. Once you've cleaned the mods that show they need it you can run LOOT again and check the summary again. Once Skyrim's mods are sorted and cleaned you're almost ready to go.

 

 

5. Cleaning Mods With TES5Edit

 

Any mod that indicates it needs a clean is usually safe to clean unless the mod author says not to on their description page. Some mods are cleaned by their authors, others aren't, but it's generally the same process for each mod you want to clean up. I don't think I could improve on Gopher's wonderful video on this topic so here it is, be sure to check his other videos if you haven't already (subscribe too). Please note that the process for other mods is identical.

 

 

 

6. Going Green With WryeBash

 

WryeBash is a great program for verifying some subtle and often missed things with mods, that's the referenced mods and their internal load orders. Now that we've got our overall load order sorted we should look at getting each mod's references to match your main Skyrim files and DLC. Depending on how you got your DLC you could have a totally different load order than someone else. Usually this means a DLC is expected as #3 and it shows as #2 in the order.

 

When WryeBash finds an out of order reference it flags the mod orange otherwise it will be shown as green, missing files are flagged in red. The ultimate goal is to try to get all your mods to show up as Green, then build a bashed patch. Anything that is red will cause a CTD or a freeze when Skyrim runs. If you notice any that do show as red click on them and look at the right side of the screen for the referenced mods list. You should see the one or more mods or mod related files that you are missing. Install those mods or remove the parent mod if that's not possible. Resort your load order and check WryeBash again.

 

If a mod is orange click on it and look at the right side list again. It should show which mods are out of order. You have three options here depending on your comfort level, one is to simply leave them alone and be content not having anything red. Second is to use WryeBash to make the edit, and third is to use TES5Edit. I prefer WryeBash myself because we are already in there anyway. If you click on those referenced mods you will be prompted to allow changes. If you say yes you can right click on the orange referenced mod names and choose "Change To", selecting the correct mod based on what the list shows.

 

This may sound a bit complicated but it's really pretty simple most of the time. You'll have something like Dawnguard as #3 and Dragonborn as #4, both show orange. Right click on Dawnguard, choose to replace with Dragonborn.esm, it should turn green. Then click the other Dragonborn and change that to Dawngaurd.esm, it should turn green as well. Make sure to select the file with the correct extension as listed. If you've done those changes properly the referenced load order will turn green and so will the selection in the load order listing as well. You can then click Save to apply that or cancel if you can't get it right or need to start over for whatever reason.

 

Once you've got your load order showing green you're just about done. I should point out that it is possible to have mods that shouldn't be adjusted like this, I know a player home that loses some of its furniture if it's changed from orange to green by resorting the referenced mods. If you notice those types of issues with a mod, simply de-activate it then activate it again in NMM/MO and redo the steps up to but not including the WryeBash change.

 

The last part for WryeBash is to build your bashed patch. It's not required but it is highly recommend. It will combine mods it can to free up more room, remember there's a 255 mod limit to the load order, combining mods can get around that! The bashed patch also builds proper levelled lists and other improvements. To build a bashed patch simply locate the "Bashed Patch 0" entry in the load order, right click on it and choose Rebuild Patch. For this tutorial just accept the defaults prompted and allow WryeBash to build the patch. It will ask if you want to enable the patch, say yes, if it isn't the last item in the load order, click on it and drag it all the way to the bottom. It must be the very last item loaded. That's it!

 

If you want to know more about WryeBash functions check out the description page on their nexus site.

 

 

7. Almost There - Validate Entire Load Order With TES5Edit

 

You've made it, we're almost at the end! Now we're going to make sure all the mods together can load without issue.

 

Run TES5Edit, by default it will auto-select all your active mods. Just click on OK. This will cause TES5Edit to try to load and validate all your active mods. If there is any error it will stop loading and tell you. If it loads all the way till the end you should be ready to run Skyrim! If there are any stops be sure to note the message and handle it appropriately. If your WryeBash screen had no red though you should be fine, if it's all green you should be golden!

 

 

8. Last Piece - Skyrim Performance Monitor

 

We should now have a working, clean, and sorted load order. Let's see how everything works!

 

Run Skyrim Performance Monitor (ENB users should check the Experimental hook - at least I had too). Set the performance monitor to run SKSE instead of Skyrim (unless you don't have SKSE for some odd reason). Make sure SPF has at least VRAM and GPU Temp selected, click "Launch Skyrim" and it will start the game.

 

You'll see an overlay on the game in the upper left that shows your current hardware stats. This is vital for determining any CTD that does happen is because of VRAM memory pressure... aka running out of resources! If your videa card has 2GB on it and you try to load 3GB worth of textures you will have errors, empty/missing textures, or even CTDs. By using SPF you can see that easily and add/remove textures as needed to stay under your VRAM limit. That can take some trial and error, it may even be a good idea to use console commands (coc) to go to various heavy cells (Whiterun, Riften, Solitude, DLC locations, etc) and see how much VRAM is used in those cells if you are really close to your card's limit.

 

Once you've played Skyrim for a while and have verified you're CTD and ILS free you can save your place and close out of the game and then the performance monitor. Run Skyrim again on its own and you should be able to game for some time.

 

Congratulations! Your Skyrim is basically as good as it can be with the mods you've enabled, woohoo!

 

 

9. Conclusion

 

I choose not to go over papyrus debugging as that can be quite the topic in its own right, but I didn't want to leave you thinking I had omitted it. If you are having problems after these steps it can be beneficial to enable the papyrus logging features via your INI files and try to capture what may be going wrong. Almost certainly at this point the issue will be script related or simply a conflict between mods, hopefully papyrus logs the actual reason. If you do choose to try to debug the logs be sure to go to the very end of the file as that is where the error will most likely be.

 

I hope that what I've presented here is both helpful and accurate. These are the processes I go through and my game is very stable, I'm nearing 2000 hours of game time as a result :smile:. If anything I've written here is not accurate please let me know, I'll happily make changes so this is as good as it can be. I am also going to edit this and add some images once I have a location for all the files to call home, hopefully that won't be too long from now.

 

 

 

Thanks for reading and Happy Gaming!

 

NB

[MaredageMods]

THANK YOU! This helped me so much, I can finally play Skyrim with barely any CTD's and over 250 plugins. Almost no lag either. Been playing for hours now! Again, Thanks!

[skannerz22]

THANK YOU! This helped me so much, I can finally play Skyrim with barely any CTD's and over 250 plugins. Almost no lag either. Been playing for hours now! Again, Thanks!

this post is old all those patches are old you need the Unofficial Skyrim Legendary Edition Patch

also cleanmem fixes stuff as well to do with lots of mods, old mods(not broken mods), low vram generally any memory related problem it clears the memory before problems cause enough stress to cause ctd

 

also the common cause for ctd is the mods are broken

Edited July 2, 2017 by skannerz22

[Wveth]

Wow, great, all my mods were working together decently and I just wanted it to run a little better and thought this might help. But I followed the steps and now Skyrim crashes when loading my mods. Brilliant.

[dreamerkid]

Hello Community,

 

As those who read the forums regularly know, there are a lot of topics involving CTDs and quite a bit of those threads are essentially dealing with the same processes to get to a resolution. So I figured I'd try to write something up to help others get past their CTDs, ILSs and other issues. To have all the suggestions I know in one place.

 

This post is aimed primarily at users who are not familiar with the ins and outs of optimizing Skyrim and are having lots of issues with crashes to desktop (CTD) and infinite loading screens (ILS). Advanced users likely won't find much benefit here but the info is of course here for everyone regardless.

 

So without further ado...

 

 

1. Needed Software

 

There are some very important tools that you MUST have to achieve a stable Skyrim with many mods. Here's what you'll need to go through the processes in this post:

 

WryeBash

TES5Edit

LOOT

Skyrim Performance Monitor

 

I am not making any assumptions to what mods you choose to run but I would highly recommend the following be included. Use the DLC patches where applicable:

 

SKSE

SafetyLoad

Unofficial Skyrim Patch

Unofficial Dragonborn Patch

Unofficial Dawnguard Patch

Unofficial Hearthfire Patch

Unofficial HiRes Texture Patch

 

 

2. Important Considerations

 

A stable Skyrim with mods is a thing of beauty. I truly believe that with the correct mods you can have a very stable game and the hundreds of hours of game play that can come from it. I routinely have multiple hour sessions without crashes and only the odd CTD... which brings me to my next point. You will CTD from time to time no matter what, that's just the nature of using a heavily modded game like Skyrim can be. Here's the ugly truth though, if you want as stable a game as possible you have to spend the time to make it so, and it can be a quite the investment. Installing a whack of mods then jumping into game may get you playing but more often than not you'll soon start seeing major problems.

 

One thing I recommend is getting your setup done before starting a new game, and don't mess with mods very often once you've got a game under-way, otherwise you may find yourself midway through Skyrim and dealing with broken or bloated saves and more regular crashes. Never remove mods from an active game unless you know what you are doing and whenever possible always start a new game when adding game changing mods.

 

On top of that I also recommend being very selective in what mods you choose. Take the time to read the descriptions, look for known conflicts, etc. It will save you many headaches long term. For instance, activating a lot of script heavy mods can make your game crawl, cause quests not to work right because papyrus (the game scripting engine) can't keep up with the demand.

 

So assuming you've got the mods you want ready let's get started.

 

 

3. Mod Install Order - (Not The Load Order)

 

You have two options here, you can go through something like STEP or you can choose to wing it, I like to wing it myself but there's some excellent advice given in the STEP Project so I recommend having a read through. Most notably is the order you should install mods, especially any that are script heavy or really change how the vanilla game works.

 

I personally install all my game changing mods first, these are your Hunterborn, Frostfall, iNeed, etc. type mods. Then I move to the texture mods. I also try to select my mods in a way that I'm not overwriting one mod's files with another mod's files, especially scripts. You'll avoid issues doing it that way unless you're comfortable or know for sure what you are replacing. By doing the game changing mods first you can also jump into Skyrim and verify they are working correctly long before you start activating the dozens of textures most people enable. You can make sure its stable then build on that, this is similar to what the STEP Project aims to achieve.

 

 

4. Load Order Sorting With LOOT

 

The load order in Skyrim is very important, you must sort your load order!. So important that if you do use mods and don't sort them you're pretty much just wasting time. The more mods you add without sorting the quicker you'll run into serious problems. So we use programs like LOOT (and Boss before it!) to make sure our load orders are correct, or as good as an automated tool can muster.

 

Skyrim works by allowing one mod to change another mod's properties simply by referencing them in the Creation Kit. This allows a mod to not need those references assets copied into it, instead the mod assumes the referenced one will be available and loaded when it gets loaded. That creates a secondary load order for each mod, don't worry about it for right now, we'll handle it with WryeBash later. We're going to focus on the overall load order of the active mods. Please note that a missing referenced file will cause a CTD every time and we'll use TES5Edit to verify that we don't have anything missing in a bit.

 

For now though, there's not a lot to go over with LOOT, the default actions are usually just fine so go ahead and run it when you've got mods installed and activated. Run LOOT then click the 'Sort Plugins' button and after a moment it will prompt for you to review and apply the purposed changes. Most of the time you can just click Apply then go to the summary report.

 

Once you're in the summary report it is vital that you scroll through and check the notes for each mod. In particular we're looking for any mention of a mod needing to be cleaned. Any mod that shows those messages should be cleaned and we'll look at how that's done next section. Once you've cleaned the mods that show they need it you can run LOOT again and check the summary again. Once Skyrim's mods are sorted and cleaned you're almost ready to go.

 

 

5. Cleaning Mods With TES5Edit

 

Any mod that indicates it needs a clean is usually safe to clean unless the mod author says not to on their description page. Some mods are cleaned by their authors, others aren't, but it's generally the same process for each mod you want to clean up. I don't think I could improve on Gopher's wonderful video on this topic so here it is, be sure to check his other videos if you haven't already (subscribe too). Please note that the process for other mods is identical.

 

 

 

6. Going Green With WryeBash

 

WryeBash is a great program for verifying some subtle and often missed things with mods, that's the referenced mods and their internal load orders. Now that we've got our overall load order sorted we should look at getting each mod's references to match your main Skyrim files and DLC. Depending on how you got your DLC you could have a totally different load order than someone else. Usually this means a DLC is expected as #3 and it shows as #2 in the order.

 

When WryeBash finds an out of order reference it flags the mod orange otherwise it will be shown as green, missing files are flagged in red. The ultimate goal is to try to get all your mods to show up as Green, then build a bashed patch. Anything that is red will cause a CTD or a freeze when Skyrim runs. If you notice any that do show as red click on them and look at the right side of the screen for the referenced mods list. You should see the one or more mods or mod related files that you are missing. Install those mods or remove the parent mod if that's not possible. Resort your load order and check WryeBash again.

 

If a mod is orange click on it and look at the right side list again. It should show which mods are out of order. You have three options here depending on your comfort level, one is to simply leave them alone and be content not having anything red. Second is to use WryeBash to make the edit, and third is to use TES5Edit. I prefer WryeBash myself because we are already in there anyway. If you click on those referenced mods you will be prompted to allow changes. If you say yes you can right click on the orange referenced mod names and choose "Change To", selecting the correct mod based on what the list shows.

 

This may sound a bit complicated but it's really pretty simple most of the time. You'll have something like Dawnguard as #3 and Dragonborn as #4, both show orange. Right click on Dawnguard, choose to replace with Dragonborn.esm, it should turn green. Then click the other Dragonborn and change that to Dawngaurd.esm, it should turn green as well. Make sure to select the file with the correct extension as listed. If you've done those changes properly the referenced load order will turn green and so will the selection in the load order listing as well. You can then click Save to apply that or cancel if you can't get it right or need to start over for whatever reason.

 

Once you've got your load order showing green you're just about done. I should point out that it is possible to have mods that shouldn't be adjusted like this, I know a player home that loses some of its furniture if it's changed from orange to green by resorting the referenced mods. If you notice those types of issues with a mod, simply de-activate it then activate it again in NMM/MO and redo the steps up to but not including the WryeBash change.

 

The last part for WryeBash is to build your bashed patch. It's not required but it is highly recommend. It will combine mods it can to free up more room, remember there's a 255 mod limit to the load order, combining mods can get around that! The bashed patch also builds proper levelled lists and other improvements. To build a bashed patch simply locate the "Bashed Patch 0" entry in the load order, right click on it and choose Rebuild Patch. For this tutorial just accept the defaults prompted and allow WryeBash to build the patch. It will ask if you want to enable the patch, say yes, if it isn't the last item in the load order, click on it and drag it all the way to the bottom. It must be the very last item loaded. That's it!

 

If you want to know more about WryeBash functions check out the description page on their nexus site.

 

 

7. Almost There - Validate Entire Load Order With TES5Edit

 

You've made it, we're almost at the end! Now we're going to make sure all the mods together can load without issue.

 

Run TES5Edit, by default it will auto-select all your active mods. Just click on OK. This will cause TES5Edit to try to load and validate all your active mods. If there is any error it will stop loading and tell you. If it loads all the way till the end you should be ready to run Skyrim! If there are any stops be sure to note the message and handle it appropriately. If your WryeBash screen had no red though you should be fine, if it's all green you should be golden!

 

 

8. Last Piece - Skyrim Performance Monitor

 

We should now have a working, clean, and sorted load order. Let's see how everything works!

 

Run Skyrim Performance Monitor (ENB users should check the Experimental hook - at least I had too). Set the performance monitor to run SKSE instead of Skyrim (unless you don't have SKSE for some odd reason). Make sure SPF has at least VRAM and GPU Temp selected, click "Launch Skyrim" and it will start the game.

 

You'll see an overlay on the game in the upper left that shows your current hardware stats. This is vital for determining any CTD that does happen is because of VRAM memory pressure... aka running out of resources! If your videa card has 2GB on it and you try to load 3GB worth of textures you will have errors, empty/missing textures, or even CTDs. By using SPF you can see that easily and add/remove textures as needed to stay under your VRAM limit. That can take some trial and error, it may even be a good idea to use console commands (coc) to go to various heavy cells (Whiterun, Riften, Solitude, DLC locations, etc) and see how much VRAM is used in those cells if you are really close to your card's limit.

 

Once you've played Skyrim for a while and have verified you're CTD and ILS free you can save your place and close out of the game and then the performance monitor. Run Skyrim again on its own and you should be able to game for some time.

 

Congratulations! Your Skyrim is basically as good as it can be with the mods you've enabled, woohoo!

 

 

9. Conclusion

 

I choose not to go over papyrus debugging as that can be quite the topic in its own right, but I didn't want to leave you thinking I had omitted it. If you are having problems after these steps it can be beneficial to enable the papyrus logging features via your INI files and try to capture what may be going wrong. Almost certainly at this point the issue will be script related or simply a conflict between mods, hopefully papyrus logs the actual reason. If you do choose to try to debug the logs be sure to go to the very end of the file as that is where the error will most likely be.

 

I hope that what I've presented here is both helpful and accurate. These are the processes I go through and my game is very stable, I'm nearing 2000 hours of game time as a result :smile:. If anything I've written here is not accurate please let me know, I'll happily make changes so this is as good as it can be. I am also going to edit this and add some images once I have a location for all the files to call home, hopefully that won't be too long from now.

 

 

 

Thanks for reading and Happy Gaming!

 

NB

 

Oh my gosh, this helped me so much. Thank you for taking time to post this. May all of your shots be critical and your gold purse full! :)

[zorothepiratehunter117]

Following the Wyre Bash section of this guide has led to consistent CTD's on startup. :(