There are red boxes with white exclamation points everywhere - and they're not disappearing. What should I do?

[Perraine]

Redownloading textures won't help, because it's a missing mesh not a missing texture. There is obviously a mod that has changed the path of the vanilla mesh to something else. That is (a BIG no,no) or the modded one is broken ... If it were only a texture problem and the paths in the mesh were correct the game would default to the purple/blue texture.

 

The exclamation marks are caused by either faulty or missing meshes, so the OP needs to determine which mod has altered in any way environmental items such as rocks or plants. get close and see if the has an interaction for picking flowers? If not, it may be one of the static "plant" meshes, of which there are several mods that purportedly enhance vanilla shrubbery. My guess would be one of those has either faulty meshes or the meshes are in the wrong place/missing altogether and the game can't find them. It could even be a butterfly / moth / insect / dust mote mesh causing the problem

[RaijuAayai]

Ah, I see. Thank you for the info! I'm going to try a few things, see if they work...

[RaijuAayai]

Ok... I have found nothing. I have no mods that touch meshes for plants, animals, etc. I did have SMIM, but I uninstalled that (again, along with every other mod) and nothing. Even running the vanilla game the meshes don't work. I thought, with reinstalling Skyrim, that would fix the mesh problem - but that isn't working either. Is it something wrong with my computer, or what? A friend said to try checking my DirectX, which says it has a problem with DirectShow, but other than that, it's up to date. Is there a fix for this? It was working fine just a few months ago, with all the same mods installed.

[SMB92]

When you reinstalled to vanilla, did you go back to the data folder and delete anything left over from mods?

[Banana6On0Fire]

Solution: removed bikini mod , worked , save file wasn't damaged

[lauren900]

i found when they have show up its normally when a mod isn't properly installed or the mod file is missing an object

[SmexyTempest]

DO NOT DELETE EVERYTHING AS SOME PEOPLE HAVE BEEN DOING

 

In case anyone is still having this problem, I'm pretty sure I found the culprit: Forgotten retex project.

It seems to be conflicting with SMIM or smthng. You can still use the mod just manually install and leave out all files with the word "basket" in it.

Edited November 8, 2017 by SmexyTempest

[daylonzee123]

I don't know too much bout but I can tell you how to find the mod that is causing the missing mesh. 1st go to the exclamation mark in-game and open console by pressing (~) then click on the exclamation mark (But be sure u have clicked on it and not something els. Now write down that code... 2nd Download and open TES5edit, when app is loaded make sure every plug in is checked and press ok. Once it loads type the same ID code that u wrote down in-game into the (Form id) box in tes5edit and press enter. it will search that code and it will lead you the mod it came from. I hope atleast knowing what mod it is helps yall out.

 

(EDIT) Iwas having the same problem and did a ton of research. Turns out it can be a little different for everyone that's why no one really has a correct answer to everyones issue with the red exclamation marks. It can be vanilla or a mod but for most cases its a mod that someone installed incorrectly or uninstalled incorrectly. I was infact missing all my textures and most of my meshes for my mod causing the the big scary red exclamation marks everywhere in skyrim. This happens when the esp is present but the meshes/texures are missing. I did what anyone would have done I looked in my skyrim data folder to check what was missing but I was looking in the wrong place. At that point I already knew what mod it was and I figured reinstalling it would help but when I did that (it tried to overwrite it self in a different place) other than my data folder. In the process of it asking me to overwrite it gave me a directory C:/Games/NexusModManager/Skyrim/mods/Virtualinstall….. in that folder I seen a list of files that had texures and meshes in them, I clicked on every one until I found the mod I was looking for and I found it, it had the "esp" and only a mesh folder with only two meshes in it. So I redownloaded the that mod off nexus and manually and added the "a new texture file and the mesh file and overwrite everything.

Loaded game Red exclamation marks gone. But like I said each issue can be different for me it was a mod and why it removed meshes and textures from that file? I don't know maybe I overwritten a mod incorrectly.

But I hope this helps.

Edited September 3, 2018 by daylonzee123

[CJLedeboer]

for me it was te mod waterplants uninstal and it was gone

[Deleted36324675User]

Its just sad how fragile this game is..